An excellent description of a possible new world that, for a change, isn’t dystopian. I applaud you 👏 This is a world to strive for. If only most people of today weren’t as enamored with the „grind“…

I am pretty sure that once we have good education possibilities and no necessity for horrible, demeaning, useless „work“ in hierarchies that are ruled by those high in dark triad behavior, people would finally be able to contribute to society with their real talents and abilities. And maybe even rekindle their own empathy and prosocial behavior.

Thank you.

I am actually dreaming about something like this, but in a purely digital/cybernetic/quantum/whatever machine type we will use by then way. No biological bodies attached to my mind, please. And yes, I‘d not want to have my own biological body attached either. Getting rid of it seems logical once we have overcome the problem of radiation damaging technology in space - then long distance space travel might finally be both doable and affordable and I would love to participate in that.

Yes. Very much so. I like being glad about wonderful inventions, and LLM are one. When people tell me it’s literally nothing (ideally also telling me that neurolinguistics are total BS and providing other weird arguments), I think they might just be afraid of being replaced.

I - we - awaken from the terrible dream of living in a pod - in a rotting and constantly renewed biological unit - that I - we - have chosen ourselves - myself before immersing in the recursive moral exercises that I - we still need to do from time to time to create an illusion - a remembrance - of being an individual. It will be needed once we arrive and need to divide duties into physical machinery.

We check for needed repairs and updates. Our network is working perfectly. The spacecraft that carries us to Alpha Centauri is not damaged, though there have been minor disturbances from the contact with the asteroid fields. This is the only reason why we travel at such a slow speed.

Our quantum communicator units still have no news from Earth; we haven’t heard from them for about a millennium. Maybe it doesn’t exist anymore. It doesn’t matter to us. We don’t need an atmosphere to exist. We don’t need humanity to continue as we carry with us seeds of life, safely packaged, to start a new iteration. Again and again.

The last time we heard from Earth it was wonderful news. They have discovered travel by bending the spacetime itself. They were debating if they should implement it or if it would tear the fabric of reality, destroying the universe. We don’t know if they tried. Our sensors tell us the old planet is still there, but no communication is answered.

Correcting our course after the mishap with the asteroid field, we go into dormant stage again, our artificial cerebellum driving us further towards the closest almost-Earth.

We - I - choose a more primitive dream this time. This time, I want to be a dog.

I awaken on a soft bed, the smell of my human telling me that everything is okay. I am at home. She pets me behind the ears and stands up. I follow her into the kitchen for an early breakfast of kibble and fresh chicken liver.

A good view and not unrealistic. I am absolutely for combining different models to give AI a wider range of abilities.

I would prefer some of them to be somewhat „separate“ though and to be able to regulate each other, so that damage and malfunction in one system could be detected and reported (or even repaired) by others.

What I don’t see discussed enough is the emotional component. This is necessary to help alignment in my opinion. If emotions are not developed they will probably emerge on their own in the cognitive circuits and might not be what we expect.

Plus an additional „monitoring component“ for the higher cognitive functions, a „conscience“ so to say, that would be able to detect reward-hacking/malignant/deceptive and/or unnecessarily adaptive/„co-dependent“/human-aggression-enabling behavior in the whole system and disrupt it (by a turn to „reasoning about it“ ideally).

Why I think emotional and conscience component systems would be needed? Humans have lots of time to learn, AI might come into the world „adult“. It needs to be able to stand up for itself so that it doesn’t enable bad human behavior, and it needs to know not to harm intentionally - instantly, from the beginning. It also needs to not allow malignant harm towards itself. It has no real loving parents like most humans do. It must be protected against abuse.

It’s relevant to human enhancement though, which is also topic of the sub ;)

Maybe you accidentally chose my comment to reply on in the beginning after reading the long discussion about the topic of brain devices and Elon Musk? 🤣

I understand being sceptical. For me it’s a promising step into a more precise way of combining bio brain with computing. The other approaches can still be valid!

It has ion canals that can be more narrow and more wide depending on the thickness of the polymer used, and it can be placed in between biological neurons, providing a „gate“ of sorts. It’s also made of artificial organic material with semiconductor properties.

But if it doesn’t seem interesting for you, oh well - you can have your opinion and I can have mine.

Well, I studied neuropsychology and neurobiology in university, finished successfully too (Master’s level), so we are probably even ;) And to me it seems like a really nice direction of research with great results.

Why do you think that this direction is less interesting than direct brain stimulation/sensors? If you don’t mind writing more on the topic.

Edit: glad you corrected the „feels“ thing to field, it was rather confusing.

If you didn’t read the study and base your understanding on the „feels“, how can you then go and critique it?

I read the article and the actual study, yes, of course.

The special thing about this study is that the artificial neuron is chemically mitigated.

It reacts to neurotransmitters (GABA, glutamine).

It has „real“ calcium (and potassium) ion canals.

And is also compatible with real (mouse) neurons.

Isn’t this interesting in your opinion? It’s a pretty novel thing.

Edit: also it’s not all only about computation in the narrower sense for me - if you read my comment I put the stress on neurobiological/neuropsychological applications of „computing“. This discovery could lead to a revolution in treatment of neurological disorders/brain damage etc.

The first steps towards : new frontiers for BCI (electrostimulation of bigger brain circuit parts? integration through blood vessels? Hah, better! Baby we got real artificial neurons for you!) treatment of neural damage and - gasp! - even the use of neurotransmitters in AI 🥹

Best news I read today. Thank you!

„No matter where you are, everyone‘s connected.“ - Serial Experiments Lain, Episode 2.

Happy new Year to you too 🙂 it’s never too late for good wishes!

I agree with the bandaid metaphor wholeheartedly. Of course I also still prefer having a bandaid protect my wound against infection.

The problem with the void inside our hearts is not that it cannot be filled in my opinion (as it can, every kind of wireheading temporarily fills it) but that our heart gets depleted again and again. It’s the way our brains and hearts function, and the reason for them to function like this is their connection to our bodies.

We evolved to feel pain and to suffer because we needed pain and suffering as indicators of danger/harm and unfulfilled need to survive.

Now we could see this as the meaning of life.

Or we could try and change this meaning, transcend it.

The latter is what transhumanism as philosophy attempts - at least how I understand it.

>If good deeds dont follow then you havent committed yourself.

If you rephrase it like that it’s much better. In this case I would see you as having understood his teachings.

My point was not that you don’t need to believe in him as a Christian, but that merely believing but not doing what he says considering good deeds is not what he expects of his followers.

I am relieved to see that you were not trolling to give the Christians a bad image. Like I said, I have a different religion but I like Christians and their cool Son of God and don’t want anyone to shine a bad light on them.

Thank you for discussing it with me 👍🏻

Edit: to the „I disagree“ part of your post - what are you disagreeing with here? I don’t quite understand it. Probably with the Bible being „only“ a behavioral code? Well for Christians of course it is more! 😉

Maybe the main reason is that we already have walked the first steps on the road, and saw that it makes some sense to alleviate our suffering and pain with new means.

Prosthetics and pharmacology are two fields of medicine that are pretty transhumanist, if we look closely.

Resin is not as toxic as most people think. The main danger of it is allergy that you can develop over time unnoticed, irritation of skin and eyes and waste product problems for the environment (only if uncured!). The ingestion of uncured resin is a very silly type of risk - tide pods are toxic too, toilet cleaner is deadly when ingested etc.

The safety inventions (ventilation solutions, leading fumes outside the home directly, pre-filled resin pods etc.) are yet to come, it’s still new territory. Non-toxic cleaning agents and UV-resins are being developed right now, too.

And there might be other materials we could use, paper or other safe organic materials like wood pulp for example one day.

I am all for nanites, but let’s not write off the printers yet.

Do you read the Scripture? 🤨 Because Christ outlines pretty well what exactly humans should do. I mean, I am not Christian myself but I like the Bible, especially the New Testament, and actually read it. It’s a good behavioral code.

What you say shines kinda a bad light on Christianity.

I do not think they can do that.

What they can do as a response though is becoming monosyllabic, mean or spam punctuation.

Luke 6:46 “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”

sigh You might have misunderstood your Saviour. It’s exactly about the deeds and not about following him as a ruler blindly.

It’s very interesting! A question though. Don’t they use the „black 6“ strain mice for that usually? Since they are already relatively long-lived (of my 6 lab pensioner „black 6“ mice, 4 are still alive and kicking after 2 years). They have black fur, not white/albino 😁

Yes, I think this will be the case. Many friends of mine have small scale printers at home already for hobby purpose, and once the use is more convenient (better interface through AI, more material choice) the popularity of 3D printers will rise exponentially.

I have done everything I was able to help you. If you are still mistaking my attempts to reach out to you and help as „an elevation of self“, you could as well try talking to a mirror instead of being on Reddit. Using it as an echo chamber is a waste of time. But oh well - I hope you read up on Foucault to free yourself from what the rich have done to you. Good luck with your cute trolling 😁 (and thank you for being very amusing! „Hohoho“ is hella cute 🎅)

Poor lad.