Computing and the Future HW 11 - Intelligent Life

1) Do you think we will find intelligent life in the universe? Why or why not?

There are really two questions embedded in this one. The first is, "Is there intelligent life?", the second is, "Will we find it?". I think the answer to the first one is maybe, and the answer to the second one is maybe. 

Quickly sketching - Let's say that the word "maybe", in the absence of better information means, "A 50 percent chance" at each node in the decision tree. My reason for using the 50 percent figure was revealed in a previous assignment where I discovered the perils of false precision. Anyway, running the calculation this means, that there is a 1 in 4 chance that the answer to both questions is, "Yes". There is also a 1 in 4 chance that life is out there but we don't find it. There is a 1 in 2 chance that the answer to both questions is, "No", since if it doesn't exist, we can't find it! There is also an imaginary component to this, where it doesn't exist, but we claim to find it. There is a whole cottage industry devoted to this.

Diving Deeper we could talk about the Drake equation:

Image Credit - Universe Today

or more recently the advent of exoplanet discovery, first by the Kepler spacecraft:

and now by Tess:

With 4023 exoplanets discovered so far, it is clear that exoplanets are abundant but we couldn't see them with land-based telescopes of the past. Most exoplanets are not in a habitable zone that would support, "Life as we know it". But we have discovered several candidate planets that are Earthlike, meaning their mass, and their relative distance from their parent star support liquid water. Given that there are billions of such stars, each with multiple planets, then it becomes more likely than not, that the answer to the first question is, "Yes". But due to the enormous stellar distances, the second question may remain unanswered for some time to come. Also we have to consider that any life that may have existed and tried to communicate with us in the past, may no longer exist. This suggests the follow-up question: "Could intelligent life have existed and now be extinct?" This because we can never see the stars as they are now, only as they were when the light from them left on its journey to Earth. If you haven't tried Galaxy Zoo Citizen Science I highly recommend it.

2) Suppose you had a coupon for a free robot. The catch is it can only do one thing. But you can get a robot that will do whatever one thing you like, just not anything else. What would you want your robot to do, and why?

There is some "wiggle room" in this question depending on what "one thing" means. Consider a Roomba. The "one thing" it does is vacuum the floor, but it executes many actions in order to accomplish that one thing: It docks with its power station, it translates in x and y. It rotates. It goes from room to room. It returns to its dock. It alerts the owner when something is wrong. Recently someone called the police about an intruder and it turned out to be a Roomba. So a Roomba can scare people also.

Image Credit - iRobot

I have a robot called a "Ring Doorbell". It does one thing. It watches my door, 24/7/365. It is my favorite robot because it does that job extremely well, taking video of all comers, and placing that video in the cloud. This prevents anyone from stealing it. Should they try anyway, it bricks itself and calls home when an installation is attempted. It has triggered a new family passtime called, "who came to the door today and what did they do?", a constant source of entertainment with all the draw of a Nature program. It was fairly inexpensive as robots go also:

For me, a robot, is any motorized mechanical device that executes a stored program in any form. From this definition some of the devices in my house are robots and some are not. A dishwasher, clothes-washer, dryer, and microwave all execute stored programs. My refrigerator does not, but the ice maker does. Recently washer and dryers have become smarter, and more autonomous. I can diagnose my dryer from my smartphone. If we lost any single robot in our house, the washer would be the most serious.

But the spirit of the question looks more to the future to a robot I do not yet have. The robot I would really want is a sentry robot. It would screen if a person was friend or foe, and deal with them accordingly. It would summon help if there was danger and it would fix a beverage if things were okay. It would perform the role of a benevolent security guard at the gate to block those whose intentions are harmful and to greet those whose intentions are good. It would use Machine Learning and expression analysis, including facial expressions, voice tone and pattern analysis, and movement patterns such as gait to develop an impression of the intentions of visitors.

The SGR-A1 - Image Credit

Of course if I had one of these for my home, I would also want one for my car. It would ride along in an unoccupied passenger seat taking stock of the traffic, and the people in the vehicles around me. If someone came up playing loud deafening bass tones, it would octave multiply the tones into the pain region and transmit them back to the source. If the source turned down the music, the robot would instantly turn down the transmission. So if such a driver turned down their bass and rolled down the window to ask, "What is that sound", I could just say, "What sound?". I would also want my sentry robot to recommend evasive maneuvers to avoid hazardous conditions and annunciate the presence of bicyclists and pedestrians as a redundant safety check. I would call it, "Back-Seat-Sentry". It would also have an off switch.

3) Imagine a robotic future. Would it possible in such a future for labor to be free? For example, suppose there was a law prohibiting anyone from being paid to do work. Could the human race survive in the face of such a law?

Absolutely. Revenge is a dish best served cold. Work is a task best performed by robots. The appliance singularity has already happened and it is fantastic.

No I'm wrong. For robotic labor in the future to be free, you would have to consent to listen to an advertisement dictated to your robot, or it would not be recharged. After awhile piles of discarded Freebots would accumulate and fill the dumpsters and landfills due to the "Amazon Effect". Hackers would overcome the limitation of forced advertising to build a new race of Hacked Freebots. This would cause Freebot corporation to go out of business and the Freebot to become extinct... or would they?

Image Credit - The Telegraph

The human race has done a good job surviving all kinds of strange laws, so there is not reason to think that anything would change on that front.

4) Comment on the movie Transcendent Man. What do you agree with, disagree with, what do you look forward to, are apprehensive about, etc.

I liked it alot. I made several notes, the gist of which are included below. I had some impressions before I watched the movie and some impressions after so I want to contrast those as well.

Before

• My sense of "The Singularity" that we have been hearing about is that it is like the Hubbert Theory of Peak Oil. A catastrophe of the future that seems like it always will be. With any of the current claims of a technical singularity, there are always moderating, mitigating factors as I wrote about in my first Computing and the Future Assignment. In that assignment I argue against a programmer productivity singularity on the basis of "too many choices". I will say that in my lifetime the appearance of computing has been a singularity and one that I like very much. My relationship with computers is now so long and so deep that I cannot imagine life without them. They are an extension of my brain, my body, and my persona.
• Kurzweil started Singularity University. I wanted to know if this was going to be more like Amway, or more like SIGGRAPH. His claim that, "The Singularity is Near" does feel a bit culty, doesn't it? In class this led us to identify the Hype Cycle - a lifecycle for the appearance of new technologies. Some are fads, some persist.

After

• In class as part of the post-discussion, we identified a 'clone vs. original' principle that emerges from the fact that we can eventually reverse engineer any biological process that we want given enough time and resources. So say that it is possible for us to completely duplicate the functionality of our body. Even if we do that, that does not make this clone, the second-instance of us, the same as the first instance of us? It is not clear how consciousness would be uploaded even if the perfect clone existed, although a hint appeared in the movie. Kevin Warwick in the UK implanted a device in his arm that produced sensations in his brain actions in the real world. He then used that device to move and feel the actions of a remote hand a world away. So he demonstrated that some aspects of volition, of motor effect and sensation CAN be reproduced in the second-instance of ourselves. The question is, in the limit, can all our volition and sensation be thus reproduced and more importantly, is that sum equal to the total of who we are? This is deep.
• Kurzweil articulates the Law of Accelerating Returns which states that the current generation of automation is used to create the next generation and this has a tremendously compounding effect on accelerating technical development. He speaks of, "A billionfold increase in computation in 40 years." That seems singular to me.
• Watching this 2011 movie I noticed how old some of the computers and technology looked, even though the movie is only 9 years old. It reminded me of the fact that humans keep improving things, along a narrow tract until a paradigm change forces them to do something else. An example of this was the advances in Yankee Clipper ships. They kept getting bigger and faster, until the steam engine was invented. Paradigm change.
• Kurzweil identifies the GNR core as Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics. This reminded me of a friend who went to work for Nanotech messiah Eric Drexler. Nanotech was not ready for prime time, and appears to follow a linear rather than exponential growth law. This spells disaster for those who were hoping for more. Machine Learning may change that, especially when combined with robotics, but that could be my own personal bias showing. Machine Learning does seem to benefit more from Moore's Law, the question is will its deployment into the real 4D world reflect that?
• Kurzweil's fight with death caused me to write:
  
  
  "If you don't accept it you are doomed to fight an unwinnable fight"
  
  
• This made me feel sad for Kurzweil, in that he is wasting time that could be used to do things more similar to those he has enjoyed great success in. He seems to have fallen in the same trap as time traveling physicist Ron Mallett, and for identical reasons. Of course these 'traps' can lead to incredible technical progress, but they can also be a source of great personal disappointment. But what if Dr. Mallett succeeded - would he tell anyone or would it be too dangerous to do so?

5) Create at least half of a first draft of your presentation. For example, you could create some slides.

I have created a half first draft using PowerPoint™. Many people belittle or criticize the use of PowerPoint™ but I find it an excellent storyboarding tool for designing and guiding a lecture in a visual format. Almost any kind of media can be included. I suppose any tool can be used to create a boring lecture, or contrariwise an interesting lecture. For me a well prepared presentation prompts my favorite activity, free-associating and brainstorming over an idea, project or topic.

I have finished construction of both vTMS™ units and tested them against their respective power supplies. I have nearly finished the vBrain™ simulation unit, except for the eyes which are drying while I write this. This process has been fun, but far more labor-intensive than I imagined when I thought it up.

6) (Grad students only) continue with the book you obtained. Read the next 20 pages. State the book title, author, and page numbers you have read. Then, discuss those pages. Explain what you agree with, disagree with, and how your views compare with those of other reviewers on Amazon or elsewhere.


Reviewed This Week: 

• Chapter 22 - New Plant Paradigms
• Chapter 23 - Asteroid Apocalypse

I have moved this answer to my ongoing review of the book, "The Human Race to the Future" a single curated document that is here.

Now this week I have a slight disclaimer - my suggestions are offered without merchantability or fitness for any purpose expressed or implied. I found the chapter on new plant paradigms very engaging - to the point I would immediately start to engineer them in my head. This would immediately lead me to some kind of difficulty or glitch that might appear in accomplishing the goal. This may caused my comment to imply, "that would be difficult", when what I'm really saying is, "This is where I would get stuck."