Transhumanist Salvation or Judgment Day?

By Lou Cabron
June 30th, 2009

We're starting to brush up against real robots, real nanotech, and maybe even the first real artificial intelligence. But will emerging technologies destroy humankind — or will humankind be saved by an emerging transhumanism?

And which answer is more liberating?

If anybody knows, it's R.U. Sirius. The former editor in chief at Mondo 2000 (and a Timothy Leary expert) has teamed up with "Better Humans LLC." They're producing a new transhumanist magazine called h+. (And R.U. is also one of the head monkeys at 10 Zen Monkeys.) But can he answer this ultimate question? Terminator Salvation played with questions about where technology ends and humanity begins.

But what will we do when we're confronting the same questions in real life?

10 Zen Monkeys: Isn't this whole idea of real transhumanism kind of scary?

RU SIRIUS: Everything's scary. Human beings weren't born to be wild so much as we were born to be scared, starting on a savanna in Africa as hunter-gatherers watching out for lions and tigers and bears (oh my... Okay, maybe just lions), subjected to the random cruelties of a Darwinian planet. I would say that the transhumanist project is probably an attempt to use human ingenuity to make living in this situation as not scary as possible, and in some theories, to actually change the situation, to create a post-Darwinian era.

Of course, that — in itself — is scary. Our favorite narratives — our favorite movies and stories and comics tend to involve humans being altered by our own technologies to dramatically bad ends. Most of those stories are silly in the particular, but the broader fear of unintended consequences or the use of advanced technologies by intentionally destructive people isn't silly.

For instance, we explored the very rapid development of robotic technologies for warfare during the web site's Terminator Week. That's viscerally scary. Logically it can also mean less civilian casualties, less harm to soldiers, and so on. And on the other hand, it can also mean less hesitation to use violence against others, or a possibly objectionable system of total control in which revolution is permanently rendered impossible. And on the other hand... I can do the "on the one hand and on the other hand" until the Singularity or at least until the Mayan apocalypse of 2012.

But seriously, what really scares the crap out of me is that we might notmake radical technological problem-solving breakthroughs — that we might stop, or that the technologies might fall short of their promises. What scares me is the idea of a 6 billion-strong species finding itself with diminishing hopes, resource scarcities, insoluble deadly pandemics, and global depression based on the delusions of abstract capital flow resulting in increases in violence and suffering and territoriality and xenophobia.

10Z: But how does transhumanism resolve these problems? How does a bunch of rich people living longer solve any of this?

RU: Let's take this one at a time. The technological paradigm that has grown out of transhumanist or radical technological progressive circles that I'm most fond of is NBIC. Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno. The promise of nanotechnology — which has become much more tangible just in the last few months (thanks to developments we recently covered on our site) — is basic control over the structure of matter. This should eventually solve most of our scarcity problems, with the possible exception of physical space. (And there are ways we might deal with that, but I'm trying to keep it short.)

Nanotechnology, of course, has enormous potentials in terms of health as does biotechnology. People can find these details just about anywhere so I won't go into it. Anyway, sickness is perhaps our greatest source of misery and our greatest resource sink... particularly if you contrast sickness not just with the absence of disease but with the possibilities of maintaining a high level of vitality.

Then... information technology allows us to organize the data for distributed problem solving and — to a great degree — democratizes it. (More eyes and more brains on the problem, working with and through more intelligent machines.) IT is at the heart of all the breakthroughs and potential breakthroughs in nano and bio — and all this is leaving aside the further out projections of hyper-intelligent AIs.

You know, getting back to what's scary, I agree with Vernor Vinge that the greatest existential threat is still nuclear warfare. But next in line is the possibility of a major plague... a rapidly spreading pandemic. And already we can see that the tools for dealing with that come down to intelligent systems and biotech. There's biotech medical solutions using intelligent systems married to global mapping and communications and organized distribution. Human behavior has a role too, of course... but not as much as romantics might wish.

Robots Take Center Stage in U.S. War in Afghanistan

Monday, March 23, 2009
By Matt Sanchez

 Boston Dynamics

A BigDog robot climbs a hill in a test of its versatility. The U.S. military is deploying the robots to Afghanistan to navigate the country's treacherous terrain.

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The U.S. military is calling out the "BigDogs" in addition to its big guns as it deploys more troops to fight terrorists in Afghanistan.

The BigDogs — four-legged robots that can navigate the country's treacherous terrain — and pilotless helicopters than can transport tons of supplies to very remote bases are just two of the new weapons being tested in Afghanistan.

The war zone is increasingly becoming a development laboratory for machines that don't eat, sleep, polish their boots or suffer casualties. But can they succeed where man struggles?

It takes a moment for the senses even to comprehend BigDog, a four-legged robot that vaguely resembles a headless pack animal.

• Click here for photos.

The machine's creator, Boston Dynamics, has a motto — “dedicated to the way things move” — and that’s precisely what is both jarring and fascinating about its invention. Using a gasoline engine that emits an eerie lawnmower buzz, BigDog has animal-inspired articulated legs that absorb shock and recycle kinetic energy from one step to the next.

Its robot brain, a sophisticated computer, controls locomotion sensors that adapt rapidly to the environment. The entire control system regulates, steers and navigates ground contact. A laser gyroscope keeps BigDog on his metal paws — even when the robot slips, stumbles or is kicked over.

Boston Dynamics says BigDog can run as fast as 4 miles per hour, walk slowly, lie down and climb slopes up to 35 degrees. BigDog's heightened sense can also survey the surrounding terrain and become alert to potential danger.

All told, the BigDog bears an uncanny resemblance to a living organic animal and not what it really is: A metal exo-skeleton moved by a hydraulic actuation system designed to carry over 300 pounds of equipment over ice, sand and rocky mountainsides.

So much for the ground war. With IED attacks in Afghanistan increasing on land, air transportation has become a major focus for the military.

PHOTO ESSAYS

• BigDogs and Big Guns

Routine helicopter flights operating 24 hours a day, year round, are crucial for the American mission. The Marine Corps has recently called for unmanned cargo flights to carry essentials to isolated areas that can be reached only by air.

Enter the K-MAX, a remote-controlled helicopter designed to transport heavy loads — even in Afghanistan's high altitudes.

The K-MAX's unique rotor design — two intermeshed rotors turning in opposite directions and slightly angled to prevent the blades from colliding — give this unmanned aircraft a distinct advantage.

“All the energy goes into the lift and eliminates the need for the tail rotor,” said Frans Jurgens, spokesman for Lockheed Martin Systems Integration, which has partnered with Kaman Aerospace Corp. to manufacture the unmanned K-MAX aircraft.
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The design enables the relatively small chopper to tow up to 6,000 pounds. “The K-MAX is basically an aerial truck,” Jurgens said.

A ground controller “pilots” the unmanned aircraft using a “digital tablet” — a portable device the size of a clipboard attached to a backpack. The controller has visual contact with the aircraft during takeoff and can see where the K-MAX is going through a camera attached to the unmanned helicopter.

Unlike other unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the K-MAX currently requires some visual contact — ground controllers to launch and retrieve the aircraft.

During a flight, K-MAX's “autonomous flight brain” calculates the best route to its destination and can automatically re-route itself should an area be designated a “no-fly” zone.

After launch, control transfers to a second ground controller waiting at the point of capture. Once the K-MAX has been sighted, the destination controller discharges the cargo by remote command.

But some in the military remain skeptical that a robot and a distant operator can replace a skilled pilot.

“When you’re dealing with a small area and a very small margin of error, mountains, temperatures, and other factors like heavy unpredictable winds, it’s hard to believe unmanned flights could account for all the variables,” Chief Warrant Officer Timothy Smail, a pilot from Eagle Lift, the 7th battallion 101st Aviation Regiment, told FOXNews.com in a phone interview from Afghanistan.

“Everything those troops have we’re responsible for bringing,” Smail said. “Not saying it can’t be done, I would just be skeptical.”

After two tours in Iraq, Smail is serving a second tour in Afghanistan, which he says is the “most difficult place to pilot in the world.”

But, Jurgens is not concerned.

“The K-MAX will fly repetitive flights that can be predictably programmed,” he said. “Given the fact that traveling by ground convoy is not the preferred transportation, unmanned cargo flights can save pilots from routine unnecessary exposure.”

KMAX has never been deployed to a war zone, but the unmanned aircraft has been a robotic workhorse in the logging industry, where it transfers heavy loads at high altitudes. It has also been used to transport water to fight forest fires.

They'll never fully replace actual people, but robots and unmanned vehicles will spare soldiers from routine tasks and enable them to focus their experience and skills on missions that require the human touch.

UK team builds robot fish to detect pollution

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LONDON (Reuters) - Robot fish developed by British scientists are to be released into the sea off north Spain to detect pollution.

If next year's trial of the first five robotic fish in the northern Spanish port of Gijon is successful, the team hopes they will be used in rivers, lakes and seas across the world.

The carp-shaped robots, costing 20,000 pounds ($29,000) apiece, mimic the movement of real fish and are equipped with chemical sensors to sniff out potentially hazardous pollutants, such as leaks from vessels or underwater pipelines.

They will transmit the information back to shore using Wi-Fi technology.

Unlike earlier robotic fish, which needed remote controls, they will be able to navigate independently without any human interaction.

Rory Doyle, senior research scientist at engineering company BMT Group, which developed the robot fish with researchers at Essex University, said there were good reasons for making a fish-shaped robot, rather than a conventional mini-submarine.

"In using robotic fish we are building on a design created by hundreds of millions of years' worth of evolution which is incredibly energy efficient," he said.

"This efficiency is something we need to ensure that our pollution detection sensors can navigate in the underwater environment for hours on end."

The robot fish will be 1.5 meters (nearly 5 feet) long -- roughly the size of a seal.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler, editing by Tim Pearce)

Pentagon hires British scientist to help build robot soldiers that 'won't commit war crimes'

The American military is planning to build robot soldiers that will not be able to commit war crimes like their human comrades in arms.

The US Army and Navy have both hired experts in the ethics of building machines to prevent the creation of an amoral Terminator-style killing machine that murders indiscriminately.

By 2010 the US will have invested $4 billion in a research programme into “autonomous systems”, the military jargon for robots, on the basis that they would not succumb to fear or the desire for vengeance that afflicts frontline soldiers.

A British robotics expert has been recruited by the US Navy to advise them on building robots that do not violate the Geneva Conventions.

Colin Allen, a scientific philosopher at Indiana University’s has just published a book summarising his views entitled Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong.

He told The Daily Telegraph: “The question they want answered is whether we can build automated weapons that would conform to the laws of war. Can we use ethical theory to help design these machines?”

(read full story)