Actually I have a very good grasp of the meaning of logic. I choose to live in the real world. What you purpose has a very very small chance of happening.

Quantum computer is not yet ready for some serious computing at this stage, but if you define computing as mere number crunching and arithmetics, then yes it is ready, it can do way better than what the normal computer can. but if you would define computing as how you would use it like you use your computer now, i am sad to announce that it is a no. i would also like to mention that there won't be an AI of terminator scale any time soon either, the reason being, AI can only get as smart a their human creator and since there are very little progress made to the AI over the course of last 30-40 years, you can correlatively imagine that there won't be anything like that happening any time soon in our future.

If we go to other planets, have chips in our brains or any other thing we can think of, all hinges on the point that we don't annihilate each other first. 

Thats nice but it has nothing to do with logic.

Logic, not that too far in the past, had many folks believing that the Earth was flat and that the Sun and other heavenly bodies rotated around the Earth.

The logic of the moment is directly related to the knowledge we have at that moment.  Otherwise there would be nothing left to learn........that's just not logical. 

i don't think we'll have strong AI in the sense we read in Sci-Fi. Instead, our ow. Capacity to do things will continue to expand exponentially. 

Philly, the geocentric beliefs which existed pre and post Galileo had nothing to do with logic. They were based on religious beliefs, not on fact or observation.

To dispute them (without presenting the argument to the Church first) would have been illogical, not because they were considered correct, but rather because of the penalties for disputing them without permission.

Doc I understand what you are saying, but that was the prevailing logic of the day or moment.  You say that it would of been illogical to dispute them yet there were folks who thankfully did or we would not be able to be where we are today. 

All things are related and relative to a particular point in time or moment.  All the sciences had somewhat of a hard time getting established and trusted as other than the work or Wizards and non believers.

Um no. People believed the earth was flat because logically if it wasn't we would all fall off. They believed the earth was the center of the universe because when looking up at sky it was obvious that everything circled it. They believed these things before the church existed, the church just incorporated existing beliefs into their dogma. 

Back on topic I actually find the Singularity to be somewhat depressing. I would prefer a more human friendly future. Something more like conventional SciFi. Everyone moving into digital realities seems more then a little pointless to me. I don't believe in a soul and I already believe that the sense of self is an illusion but still once we start copying and pasting ourselves into made up worlds you really stop being human or really even a true individual.

Mmmmm, Chipped Soylent Green on toast.

 And for Zombies, that extra little bit of crunch.

Quite true! Though.. If I were to be concerned about things that could annihilate us, other people being the cause of it would be the least of my worries. There are so many ways we could die horribly before achieving a superior class of civilization.. We got your super volcanos, we got your gama-ray bursters, we got your rogue black holes, we got more Earth Devastator type mountains of rock and ice than you can shake a stick at! Oh yeah and the Sun is going to eat our planet in a few billion years. Think Unicron, but bigger. The complete indifference of the universe is terrifying. If you dwell on it.

Humans pose the least threat to our survival and that of the Earth in the long-run, I know it may not seem that way, but a person can change their mind about doing something stupid and/or other. A long-dead giant star, far, far away sending us the echoes of its passing is something that we can not negotiate nor contend with. It would come and it would go, in its wake would be the most beautiful set of colors you would ever get to see in the sky. Then that would be the final chapter on our and most of life on the Earths story.

Frogboy, you may very well be correct about that, at least up to a point. That is what the singularity that Kurzweil talked about, our own capabilities being expanded upon and eventually becoming more than just "meat". Which.. A lot of us are more than that now days anyway. I know of several people of which you'd find it hard to describe where they end and their technology begins.

Now that I think about it, as an AI programmer you should have some sort of opinion on this question I've had for some time now.. What happens to gamers, and gaming in general when you get to the point of Grand Theft Auto 15, or whichever number comes with advances in quantum computing that allows for.. Well, digital beings to be "born" into? Where the everyday person on the street in the game actually has a life that they actually remember, have feelings about, jobs that they are going to, worries about bills being paid and.. The player runs them over trying to chase down their target. What are the actual implications of such things? Will it change what it means to be human? What it means to be a living entity? Are we mature enough as a society to even ponder this question, let alone answer it?

When everything of who you are as a person can be recreated, "simulated".. At that point you can achieve a paradox by asking a very simple question: who are you? Which one is the real one? Is that even a valid question? I'm puzzled, but that is my nature. I do not think being who we are means what we think it means. I wonder if a PETA-like group would form for digital entities. Though, that isn't a very apt description of what they would really be, we're all the same at the very base, amorphous energy given form. Our thoughts are just as electrical as theirs would be.

Hm, just a thought.

 Philly, "logic" does not mean "common belief".

Sorry, but no. The medieval Church inherited the Hebrew ouranographic model based on some quote from Daniel (if memory serves). The geocentric model was inherited from Ptolemy.

Lots of good points there and you're right, the concept of AI is going to get very very murky in a few years and I was really sloppy in my use of the term strong AI.

When I use the term, Strong AI, I am really talking about an AI that is truly artificial (i.e. not modeled on our own intelligence).  That is the type of AI that I am skeptical occurring.  I know that Kurzweil believe this is inevitable but just like he (and I for that matter) believe that gene therapy is going to have a short life-span, I believe that artificial intelligence engines are going to have a short life-span.  

It's sort of like robots. There are lots of people who imagine the future is going to be filled with intelligent robots.  I don't see this happening at all.  I think our technological progress is becoming so rapid that we'll bypass robots as a solution to things just like we'll bypass long-term genetic therapy and long-term moving human biologics around the solar system.

Instead, we'll simply keep extending more and more of "us" into "the cloud".  It won't happen overnight. I don't think we'll be doing any sort of intrusive inorganic conversion (i.e. I don't see us becoming Borg-like).  Eventually (and by eventually I really mean 25 years from now) most of what makes "us" us will be in the cloud at which point you could argue that this enhanced version of us is in effect, "AI" because we'll have vastly expanded our intelligence using artificial means.

I realize when we look at a fixed point in time -- 2013 -- what I say above may seem absurd to some.  But, then again, someone in 1813 would think the future we live in today would have been an absurd scenario.  We already are using artificial means to greatly expand our individual capabilities.  

In 1813, homes were primarily lit with candles (if you were rich, most people, if they lit their homes, did so with animal fat and other rather smelly stuff). Furniture, such as it was, was kept up against walls. The idea of having furniture in the middle of the room would be ridiculous (you'd trip on it in the dark all the time).  It wouldn't be until Whale Oil became popular that lamps would start to become a solution (again for the rich) which led to kerosene and then gas and of course electrical lighting.

Today, in 2013, I can, from my person, turn on and off the steady, perfect, illumination in my home from across the world. I get control the temperature of my home from across the world. I can "command" my home to play movies on the television for guests even if I'm not at home (mind you, in 1813, the equivalent entertainment would be going to the theater to watch a live performance). Point being in 2013, an individual can command light, heat, cool, entertainment and more via their constructs (their tiny machines) from anywhere in the world.  

None of the above scenario required me to insert wires or electrodes into my body.

And I want to emphasize this: The pace of this progress is accelerating exponentially. That's why so many people have a rough time realizing that our dreams of a Star Trek future or one of robots or even a future where we're all genetically modified super beings will never come to pass because technology will outpace them. They'll never have a chance to really get going.  We'll still have some of this stuff but they'll go the way of the telegraph except unlike the telegraph which lasted many decades, the things I mention above many only get a few years of spotlight before being passed on by.

In the time that this forum is likely to still exist, I predict (And we can refer back to this in another 10 years) that 10 years from now (and this forum is 12 years old already) that the idea of sending biological human beings to Mars will seem ridiculous to a lot of people, if not most people.

One more personal example of how our individual capabilities, enhanced via our machines, is trumping our "meat".  As some of you know, I'm an amateur astronomer. I've spent many thousands of dollars over the years on telescopes.  I still, for the kids and such, will haul out one of my smaller ones to show them Jupiter or Saturn.  But that's about it.  Why? Because today, I can simply take control of a robotic telescope in an observatory somewhere in the world (like the Canary Islands) and look at the sky with that.  Why would I futz with a 14 inch telescope (if you've ever used a large non-permanent positioned telescope you know what I mean) when I can "see" the same thing with a much better telescope?

And we're just beginning.  Aug Glasses are coming (Google glass being a primitive example), Aug Chairs an when they figure out how to connect our "meat" inputs to the cloud in a way that is culturally acceptable, we'll have Aug us and at that point, the singularity will be upon us.

"Conventional SciFi" is somewhat of an oxymoron.

....and more often than not....it's hardly "human friendly" ....;)

Still, conventional SciFi is significantly closer to our current time compared to extreme scifi which really gets far out there and doesn't look back. I'd rather have something like Dune than to find out that yes, you're really living in a simulation and god exists and it is trying to kill you right now aaaaa.

I wonder if a future of Augmented humans living online in some kind of cloud would mean greater freedoms for the individuals, or less? How much of our perception of reality would we really be able to grasp if spoon-fed information from government/multinationals?

Brad, with all due respect, I simply don't see the human race plugging ourselves into the cloud. Too many bad things could happen. Think about Star Trek. No one was plugged into the cloud on the show. Besides there are some really good advantages to keeping ourselves out of the cloud. Reproduction urges is high on the list. 

Heh, that hasn't stopped us before!

There are many that argue that writing technically already did that.

Most of humanity's progress we can associate to the invention of writing. For the time in human history, we gave humans the ability to both expand their memory (the original hard drive if you will), and to leave parts of themselves (their thoughts) out of their bodies for someone to just come along and pick up.

How often have we read something we wrote dozens of years ago, something we had completely forgotten about, but as we read it we realize that the writing is still absolutely "us".

In that context, is it that strange to imagine that many of my memories might live in the cloud, and i simply pull them down once in a while to experience them?

All of that said, i still question whether technology will continue to progress at this exponential pace. Sure, if we look at the last 200 years humanity has moved at a breathtaking pace. But look at most of our history, and our children and children's children lived exactly the same lives as their parents. So is our situation the new normal....or simply a blip in history that will soon be corrected for the "normal" course of events?

Do you have a cell phone?

You are already partially plugged in.

Even if we could block by block connect fabricated neurons, there is no guarantee that will make a mind. If a mind is not a Turing machine, if it is truly creative, then no procedure will ever create one. 

You mention that our ability to do stuff will still increase exponentially. The problem is that the stuff to do becomes increasingly hard. The foundations of physics were unmoved for two centuries because the next leap required progress in so many areas. 

You talk about being able to change the temperature of your house from anywhere in the world. Much of that is an extension of radio technology, which is a century old. The rest, the invention of the physical internet, is almost half a century old. I don't think because we can create better tools we will be able to utilize them as quick as we advance them.

I think there is a just cause for skepticism that a machine-based singularity is on the brink. Whether a mind-based singularity is on the brink is another story, in my opinion.

Not really. I can turn off the cell phone. It's not emmbedded in my body. I don't store any data on any cloud. 

I think everyone hopes for a singularity soon, we just have trouble envisioning the means. Whether it is the Second Coming or technological immortality, we hope for something that makes everything we have believed too good to be true not even good enough. Religious or technological visions of paradise tend to be most satisfying in the abstract, because whether it is curse or blessing, bliss or hell, we have no native capacity to imagine the bounds of good as we have the far reaches of torment. Suffering is the concept we save for the sharp miseries of life, but we have no real perspective other than each other's experiences. The singularity hope is that the best in experience and imagination would be suffering in comparison, that our imaginations are exceeded so far by the will of reality that to exist is to exist as someone with all the resources of God would choose to exist.

If to exist is to will, to have power, then existence would be omnipotent only if it could have the power to affect itself. Can God create a stone so heavy he can not lift? If God couldn't, then God would have no power whatsoever. It would mean that God could not affect itself, and could never create an identity or a perfection.

I think to exist is to have complete power, which is the complete power to affect oneself, and which is the power to powerlessness, to impose struggle if that is the will of existence. Why would existence struggle? The only thing that is undefinable is the identity of existence, with absolute power comes an absolute unaffectedness, and without any definition imposed the struggle of existence is create God out of the will to meaning.

I wrote the following blog stream of consciousness, unedited. It is why I think the singularity is coming, but it is not of machines or meat, but existence which knows itself through the trial of being subject to its own cruelty willing the unthinkable paradise, the impossible perfection.  

http://intelligentdesire.tumblr.com/

Im really interested how do we prevent the destruction that a solar flare might do if only one thinks of space radiation...upon circuit chips it'll throw us into dark ages...

have they invented any countermeasures to that?

not really ... unless you place all of your favorite electronics into a Faraday cage.