Brain Archive

The Future Will be Both Green AND Gray

The First 2 Decades of the 21^st Century will be the Golden Age of Biotechnology

• We've reached the intersection of Biology and Information Science
• Biology as software
• We're learning the information transformations underlying life and disease processes
• How they work
• How to fix / transform / enhance these natural methods

Many Intersecting Bio-Information Revolutions

• Tissue engineering: grow new telemere-extended cells, tissues, organs
• Rational drug design: design drugs for precision tasks
• Genomic panels
• Fixing genomic defects
• Reverse-engineering the Genome through the Proteome
• Precise tracking of each individual's biochemical pathways
• Individualized medicine
• And many others. . . . .

The 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th Decades will be the Golden Age of BioNanoTech

• We've already crossed the threshold:
• We have devices emerging to replace body parts, organs
• The age of neural implants is well under way
• Cochlear implants
• Parkinson's Implant (communicates directly with ventral posterior nucleus)
• Experimental implants for stroke patients
• Retinal implants
• Many others under development
• There are already 4 major conferences on BioMEMS

Many Emerging Designs for Linking the Wet Analog World of Biological Information with Electronic Information

• Max Planck Institute's Noninvasive "Neuron Transistor"
• Quantum Dots
• Control of Neuroprosthetic systems using pattern recognition on brain activity despite damaged nerve pathway

Intelligent Machines are Making Their Way Into Our Blood Stream

• U of Illinois at Chicago capsules with 7 nanometer pores cured type I Diabetes in Rats
• Many designs to deliver medications in controlled manner, including the brain
• Sandia micro robot traps cells with tiny jaws and implants substances
• Robert Freitas' conceptual designs for respirocytes, artificial platelets, nanorobotic microbivores
• Many other examples….

Nanotech is behind Biotech, but….

• Consider the law of accelerating returns
• We have been and will continue to double the paradigm shift rate each decade
• So the 20th century was < 20 years of progress at today's rate of progress
• We'll make equivalent progress in < 15 years
• The 21st century is equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at today's rate of progress

By 2030

• Electronics will utilize molecule-sized circuits….
• organized in three dimensions
• bioMEMS will have evolved into bioNEMS

A Big Role for Small Robots

• It will be routine to have millions / billions of nanobots coursing through our capillaries, communicating with:
• Each other via a wireless LAN
• The Internet
• Our biological neurons
• Providing:
• Vast augmentation to our immune system
• Otherwise repairing and augmenting our biological systems
• Providing full immersion virtual reality encompassing all 5 senses
• and neurological correlates of our emotions
• "Experience Beaming"
• Most importantly…..

Expanding our Minds…

• Multiplying our mere hundred trillion connections many fold (eventually by trillions)
• Intimate connection with nonbiological forms of intelligence
• Direct connection to other minds
• Downloading of knowledge

Nonbiological Intelligence will combine….

• The parallel self-organizing paradigm of biological pattern recognition, with
• The strengths of machine intelligence:
• Speed
• Accuracy and scale of memory
• Ability to instantly share knowledge
• Ability to pool and network resources

The Ethical Barriers are very weak

• The ethical barriers even for biological technology are weak:
• Like stones in a stream, the water rushes around them
• e.g., the stem cell controversy has only accelerated efforts to bypass unneeded egg cells by transforming one cell type into another
• through an understanding of the protein signaling factors

"Natural" Technologies Always Proceed Synthetic Technologies

• Carrier pigeons were eclipsed by human made flying machines · Human scribes were replaced
• Human scribes were replaced by automated word processing
• Machines greatly outperform human and animal labor

Ultimately AI will vastly outperform human intelligence

• Biological intelligence is stuck
• Biological humanity (10¹⁰ humans) has 10²⁶ calculations per second today and will have 10²⁶ cps 50 years from now
• Machine intelligence is millions of times less powerful today, but growing at a double exponential rate
• The cross over point is in the 2020s
• By 2050, nonbiological intelligence will be trillions of times more powerful than biological intelligence
• Machine intelligence will combine the strengths of both contemporary human intelligence with the speed, capacity, and knowledge sharing of machines

The perspective that this "Singularity" in human history is a century or more away fails to appreciate the explosive nature of the exponential growth inherent in the law of accelerating returns

Audio clips of the debate

Gregory Stock's presentation

Ray Kurzweil's presentation

Debate

Audience Q&A

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   Mind·X Discussion About This Article:

		change posted on 05/08/2002 12:24 AM by marilyn1mew@hotmail.com	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
	it's all just SOOOOOO wonderful sounding, but it's all quite terrifying. i want this to work. i want to be young and beautiful forever. i want everyone to be perfect. if there's going to be problems with weirdo terrorists and such, give me what ya got and aim me in the direction of evil. i'll take them out. you're looking at someone who just doesn't give a damn. but then, i'm a bit bzzzzzzzd. ^_^ marilyn

		Re: Arguments for a Green AND Gray Future posted on 05/08/2002 2:10 PM by fuzzgun@btinternet.com	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
	It's interesting to listen to people debating on AI type subjects. The main thing I gleaned from these audio clips was the way in which technology for some people seems to have been elevated almost to the status of a religeon. Some of these guys really seem to believe that technology can make them live forever. In particular there also seems to be an obsession with predictions and dates, coupled with a lack of interest in practical details and the difficulties that lie therein. I've worked in technology for a long time and even tried some AI projects and I have to say that these things are far from easy and require huge amounts of effort and time to implement successfully. I would say that beyond about the next five years it's almost impossible to make accurate predictions about the course that technology will take. I think at best the sorts of future applications which these guys are debating - such as nanotechnology interfacing with the brain - are possible futures, but by no means a certainty. In principle almost anything is possible. Whether these things can be achieved practically and economically, and also whether they would be considered desirable by most people is another question entirely. - Bob

		Re: Arguments for a Green AND Gray Future posted on 05/25/2002 2:56 PM by j.tiede@worldnet.att.net	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
	That a gray future may be less threatening than a green one may be not be a realistic view. Here is an opinion from The Economist that presents an arguement against reverse engineering our brains. http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1143583 I expect more of this in the future. While I agree that scientific progress routes around governmental interference eventually, there are examples where it has certainly retarded progress. In our recent past, nuclear power has been all but outlawed (maybe "overlawed" is a better expression) in the US. In the more distant past, the Japanese relinquished firearms for a couple hundred years and the Chinese gave up deep water sailing vessels for a longer time. The part that bothers me is "eventually." *I* want to benefit from these advances. The above article would seem to fit into the "Dangerous Visions" section of this web site.

		Re: Arguments for a Green AND Gray Future posted on 05/25/2002 5:14 PM by tomaz@techemail.com	[Top] [Mind·X] [Reply to this post]
	We have to understand, that a tiny fraction of all possible molecules have came out of the green (or better red) evolution. To stay confined on this small island is an unrealistic option. The creme de la creme only, of the unexplored gray area, is far more colorful than all the red/green, we know. It's less than 100 people in the world now who see, how deep we are about to go. Half of them are coming here. ;) Mainstream newspapers are talking about less important tendencies. - Thomas