What the first conscious AI will look for

Cyborg Janus by ink_river. What Would AI Do?

Wired's April issue came 2 days before Easter, giving me a good amount of time to read it amidst the "Happy Easter" greetings floating around. An article on Ray Kurzweil entitled "Staying Alive" suits well for the mood because it talks about a man's quest for immortality. Ray hopes to stay alive for the day when machines finally becomes self-conscious. And then he can utilize that technology to cheat death. The Singularity will immortalize us, he says.
The Singularitarian's quest for immortality hinges on technology and science. Things like simulating one's brain in the hopes of perpetuating consciousness to preserve the mind, or merging human bodies with machines, vice-versa. It was my youthful dream to download my "Self" into a perfect computer so I can live forever - until i realized it is false immortality, and its just a matter of longevity or life-extension. Whatever the mind's platform or substrate is, it is subject to decay owing to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Death can never be cheated in this kind of universe where entropy keeps creeping in.
But I have to admit, it sure would be fun being there when the Singularity finally arrives. I would love to meet the first conscious AI. But to set my hopes upon the Singularity for Immortality is not my preference.
But I do like Ray's idea that the world will be saturated by thought in 200 years. Something in that line reminds me of Teilhard de Chardin's Noosphere. There's something deeper beyond this material physical universe where true immortality can be found. And that, I believe, is what the first Conscious AI will be looking for.

Relativistic Effects on Galactic Civilizations

This post is a speculation on relativistic effects on the pace of evolution of Life and Civilizations in outer space.
A simple illustration is provided to show the effect of varying gravitational fields in different regions of space and their implications on the speed of the development of Galactic Civilizations (chart).
Since all physical process that occur in a region with lower gravity proceed faster relative to a region within a high-gravity zone (such as near a black hole), then Life that develops in a region with a weaker gravity will evolve faster and develop technology quicker relative to Life in a region with a more intense gravity - where time runs 'slower'.
The idea is simple: Processes and metabolisms run "faster" in a place where there is less gravity as compared to another place with greater gravity.
An example of a region which has low gravity (and where the clock ticks faster) is a galaxy with a moderately-massive blackhole at its center. Another example of low-gravity regions is in the outer edges of spiral galaxies.
We can also consider the relativistic effects of the velocity of stars that lie above or below the plane of the galaxy's spin. They would not be moving as fast as other stars who are within the plane and closer to the center of the galaxy. (Remember the whirlpool in your tub? Your toy boat accelerates as it gets closer to the drain hole).
In those regions described above where gravity and velocity is low, processes are faster, biochemical reactions will occur quicker, life will develop earlier, and evolve much faster. They will develop technology sooner and spread out into other solar systems.
Given the ratio of 1:10, for every 1,000 years on Region B, life in Region C would have advanced 10,000 years. This has massive implications specially when you think of the runaway exponential curve of technology once it takes hold. Remember the Singularity?
Since our sun lies somewhere in Region B of the Milky Way, it would make sense to point our SETI instruments and exoplanetology telescopes towards the outer fringes of The Milky Way's spiral arms.
As write this post, I am wondering why Relativity was not taken into account when the famous Drake Equation was formulated. Also, I am wondering why Fermi had not thought of this clue when he asked where the other civilizations are. Part of the answer, I believe, is that these advanced civilizations must be in a region where time flows faster relative to us.

Both The Ghost and The Machine

I have come across a wonderful article by Jonah Lehrer (editor of Seed Magazine) about the mind and reductionism.
The article calls for a new method to understand Consciousness, and to move beyond reductionism.
The other points of the article are extracted and shown below:

- Reductionism alone cannot answer the question of where the self or the mind comes from.
- The whole is best understood in terms of the whole
- You and I are "epiphenomenon"

Now, we come to the Archetyper's classic extraction of 'archetypes' from this article:

"Look at a Beethoven symphony. If the music is reduced to wavelengths of vibrating air -- the simple sum of its physics -- we actually understand less about the music."

"The mind is like music."

"Our consciousness...feels like more than the sum of its cells...we feel like the ghost, not like the machine."

"Neuroscience has effectively investigated the sound waves, but it has missed the music."

"How does our pale gray matter become the Technicolor cinema of consciousness? What transforms the water of the brain into the wine of the mind? Where does the self come from?"

Now what does the Archetyper say in response to the article itself? Well, its simply that the Mind is The Ghost and The Machine entwined together. The Mind, like Light, is both a wave and a particle. It is not Mind-Body Duality, rather it is Mind-Body Singularity - The Mind and Body is One.
As such, simultaneous research innovations in BOTH the science of machine "deconstruction" or reductionism, as well as unconventional "wholistic" analysis of emergent entities like the mind is necessary to truly understand Consciousness. Balance is the key. Like Yin and Yang, the clue is both the brain itself and the mind; its the form and the function together. Both the analytic prowess of the Left hemisphere and the creative genius of the right hemisphere must both be employed and put to work together to understand the enigma of the mind.

link: www.latimes.com

The Simplelarity Principle

Here is an Article from Scientific American so full of beautiful concepts to tackle for the Archetyper. I will first list down the phrases from that article which ring a bell, and then tell you what I think:

• core tool of skepticism: how to see through information obfuscation


• what Tufte teaches about analytical design: Good displays of data help to reveal knowledge relevant to understanding mechanism, process and dynamics, cause and effect. We see the unthinkable and think the unseeable


• Clear and precise seeing becomes as one with clear and precise thinking.
  - the Feynman-Tufte Principle: a visual display of data should be simple enough to fit on the side of a van


• Simple design, intense content

What stands out for me is our tendency to simplify complexity in order to understand. Using Diagrams, Web Interfaces, Lists, Theories (Grand Unified Theory or TOE, String Theory), Math and Symbolisms, Metaphors, Analogies and Parables - it is proven time and time again that the most effective method to understand our universe is simplification. Why is this so?

Why is it that we dont "complexify" things in order to make them more understandable? To me, this is a pattern worth noticing, so relevant to our era that I must give it a name: The Simplelarity Principle.

The word - Simplelarity (simple-larity) stems from my observation that the tendency of Intelligence towards "Simplification" runs counter to the Singularity. In Vinge's and Kurzweil's terms, the Singularity is defined as the point where machines surpasses human intelligence and everything becomes unpredictable (think post-event horizon). Well, unpredictability means chaos and complexity. On the other hand, Simplelarity simply means that when machines, and/or humans become super-smart, everything about the universe would have been simplified via Mental Models or Tools to make everything understandable and predictable. Higher Intelligences must be able to simplify things better, not make a mess, right?

Brains and Minds use tools and mental models to simplify and make sense of the world. If we all become more intelligent and better at simplifying things, just as the Feynman-Tufte Principle example shows, then the world will 'become' a much simpler and better place, more understandable and easier to manage.
Hence we would never cross the 'Event Horizon', rather, we will just stay on the 'Prevent Horizon'. Simplelarity is Bliss.