FastForward Radio — J. Storrs Hall Returns

By | May 11, 2009
3 Comments

Sunday night Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon welcomed J. Storrs Hall back to FastForward Radio.


jstorrshall.JPGRecently named president of the Foresight Institute, Dr. Hall is a scientist, entrepreneur, and prolific writer on nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, machine ethics, and other social impacts of technology.

Topics included:

Stephen’s quick thumbs-up for Star Trek.

Whats new with the Foresight Institute

Early Retirement for Humanity. How does what Josh describes compare to other models?

Risks of Nano-Assemblers:

Michael A.’s original post on the subject

Nick Bostrom explains the idea of a Singleton

Josh’s response

Michael’s response

Utility Fog. Will it get us to where we want to be?

  • Sally Morem

    I pulled this from your Foresight link:

    “One way or the other, the human race is going to take an early retirement in the next few decades. I find this a much better way of thinking about what’s coming up than singularity. The term singularity was specifically created to reflect a notion that there was an event horizon associated with advancing AI. But whether or not this is true of the far future, some distinct profiles of the near future are clearly visible. And from what we can see of it, it is going to make a huge difference what we do now.

    So, I think, we need a better term than singularity to describe what’s coming up. It should reflect the fact that there are indeed some things we can tell about what will be happening. It should, if possible, reflect the fact that this will be a major liberating event for the human race. Mo longer need we spend our lives in forced drudgery, since we have built machines to do the necessary work. But it should also reflect the fact that we need to be planning for it.”

    On humanity taking “early retirement,” I’m not sure what that means. Die out? Play golf and potter around the garden in aggregate?

    But on individuals human beings, it makes much more sense. What happens when our technology is a mere 1,000 times more capable than today’s? I suspect when we achieve full-fledged nanotechnology, sometime before the technological Singularity, human beings will be able to live well off of replicator technology without doing a lick of work.

    A show exploring the implications of human beings no longer needing to work for a living and how this might come about would be an interesting one. I notice that even people attuned to accelerating technology don’t connect it with their personal lives, assuming there will be jobs, but fewer of them, and there will be money, and markets, and welfare subsidies, and retirement programs, etc.

    The writer is right, however. The technological Singularity would involve many orders of accelerated change than retirement.

  • http://wheretheresawilliam.blogspot.com Will Brown

    Phil,

    Please ask Dr. Hall his position on the likelihood of a practical distinction between the nanofactory/replicator hardware and the “software” used to design/create actual products. How would such a distinction effect the issue recently raised between himself and Micheal Anissimov?

  • http://wheretheresawilliam.blogspot.com Will Brown

    Listened to the show last night (only solved my FFR sign-in problem in the final 10 minutes of the live broadcast) and had an idea.

    Any thoughts?