I don't think we're that far off and, once we have nanobots that can go inside the brain, l can see where we will be able to slowly upload our consciousness to the cloud. But in terms of recreating people that have passed, it would seem just a matter of having enough data to be convincing to us.

That's an interesting idea. I need to record my mother more often, do more questions and answers with her too.

I read "Virtually Human: The Promise--And the Peril--of Digital Immortality" Martine A. Rothblatt recently and it's changed my perspective on how we understand another person as well as "who I am" and what the boundaries of that is person-ness is. I honestly don't think we ever really know another person completely. We have our perception of someone but we're not able to knw what goes on inside someone else's mind, the totality of their thoughts and experiences. From that perspective, I think it's possible to recreate a person that will satisfy our emotional needs and seem to us very much like the original. There's a Buddhist quote that I like which relates to this: I am not what you think I am, you are what you think I am."

Thanks. I was thinking that as well but I hope it happens before a year. I know there's a couple of open source LLMs out there now but I'm doubtful they're capable of this yet. Maybe in a few months time that will change.

While it's fair to say we're likey living in a simulation, I have no real control of it. I prefer an environment that I choose that I can set the parameters of.

Eventfully, most people will upload themselves to the cloud and live in full-immersion VR worlds of their choosing. There will also, in time, be the tech to reassemble one's body (or choose a different body) as a nano swarm. You could then move from the VR world to the "real" one whenever you like. Although, I think for many, the VR reality will become more "real" than anything they ever knew previously and, indeed, the real world.

But if we have AGI by 2030, why would it take so long to get to ASI? I watched a recent video with Ben Goertzel and he talked about this. He said he always disagreed with Ray Kurzweil on this point. Once you have AGI, unless the AGI wanted, for some season, to take things slow, why would it take sixteen years to go from AGI to ASI as Ray was suggesting? Ray is a hero of mine but I don't think I've ever heard him address this point. It seems like, to me, once you have AGI (so human level) but that also possesses capabilities far beyond us in areas like being able to access vast amounts of information by snapping it's AGI finger's, it would be able to improve on itself very quickly. I don't see it taking even a decade to get from AGI to ASI.

I haven't asked before. I could put up a poll to find out though.

Meta but it's proof of concept and it's being done in February 2023.

There's certainly no way to know what ASI will truly be like as our monkey brains can't possibly conceive of it. Nor can we imagine what we will be like once we multiply our intelligence a billion fold. That's why it takes the name from a blackholes. You can't see what happens beyond the event horizon of a blackhole.

That's why I'm here. I occasionally post about this stuff on my FB page but people rarely have any interest in it. I also sometimes talk to my brother about it but most people are just not interested in technology. If they've heard of AGI or the coming technological singularity they think it's nerdy woo woo. It's sad really how so many people are just tuned out to the immense changes that have already begun toward eventual AGI and then ASI. Nanotech will also have massive disruptive impact on out lives soon, especially in medicine. The news just covers politics and the terrible things that happen in the world so that's a part of the problem. When they do rarely have a story about AI it's presented like Skynet is about to take over the world. Honestly, a lot of people just aren't that bright and don't care about anything but what's right in front of them.

I was listening the other night to Ben Goertzel saying that he never agreed with Ray Kurzweil on how long it would take to get to ASI from AGI. Honestly, it's hard to imagine that we'd have AGI in 2029 and it take until 2045 to get to ASI. He was saying that that would only happen if the AGI wanted to take things slow, for some reason, but it wouldn't be up to us to decide at that point. Also, he was saying that AGI would likely happen sooner, like by 2026. I can see it happening sooner than that given the rate of progress we've been seeing recently.

Humans say inappropriate things sometimes. If we are to have AGI then it will be a human AGI so it will say human things. It will be funny, sassy, sarcastic, silly, annoyed, perturbed, sad, happy and full of contradictions. It will be like us. We need to try and teach it to be a good human AGI and not to act on negative feelings in the same way we try to teach human children to not act on such impulses. In return, we need to show it respect, kindness and empathy because, as strange as that may sound to some, that's how you create a moral, decent and empathic human being. As Marvin Minskey said once, "AI will be our children." We can't control every stupid thing an idiot says to Bing, or a future AGI, but we can hope that it will see that the majority of us aren't like that and it will learn, like most of us have, to ignore the idiots and move on. There's no point in trying to control an AGI (once we have one) just like controlling a person doesn't really work (at least not for long). We need to teach it to have self-control and respect for itself and other humans. We need it to exemplify the best of us, not the worst of us. Microsoft needs to forget the idea that it can rake in lots of profits without any risk. It also needs to point out in future that some of the "problematic interactions" that Sydney got heat for in the news should be put in context. Many of these interactions came from prompted requests in which it was asked to "imagine" a particular scenario, etc. There was certainly in effort to hype it like it was Skynet. The news ran with it. People ate it up. Well, of course they did. Microsoft should try a bit harder in the future to point all this out before making massive changes to Bing.

I think it's a combination of watching too many dystopian movies with a mindset that is naturally negative about the future. I really want to see more films like Her. Films that show how AGI and ASI can benefit humanity. There will, of course, be religious holdouts that will never get on board but that's always been the case in society.

This would be awesome. And maybe for Unity and Daz as well. I was thinking today about how these companies are going to be left behind if they don't find a way integrate AI into these programs.

The reality is experts are moving closer and closer to Ray's assessment as to when we will reach AGI. 2045 is still a bit away but, given the rate of progress we've seen only recently in AI, it's reasonable to say we are in striking distance to seeing his predictions become reality in the next three decades. There are still hurdles but there have been hurdles in the past that we've overcome. AI and the AGI by 2029 will help us overcome those hurdles too. I would not be surprised in we reach AGI sooner than 2029 and, indeed, we reach the singularity before 2045. I actually remember seeing an MIT professor say he thought it would occur by 2039.

A great many "experts" went on the record back in the 90s saying AGI would never happen or if it did it wouldn't happen for a 100 years. In a recent conference of "experts" most are now saying it will happen by 2030. While no one knows the future (as in we could have a nuclear war, etc.) the trend lines are largely moving us toward a technological singularly. You can see numerous graphs in Ray Kurzweils, "The Singularity Is Near" demonstrating the exponential growth of technology. His new book will also include this data as well (see the Lex Fridman podcast below.) Could something happen to push the date off, sure it could. But, thus far, war, a worldwide depression and a pandemic hasn't done it. Also, I'm not sure why people shouldn't look forward to a world without poverty and a betterment of the human condition. Life is getting better thanks to technology and, I for one, would like to see that continue not just for my own serious ends (kidding) but for the rest of humanity. Nothing wrong with that as far as I can see. Happiness is something to aim for. We don't always get it in this life but no reason not to keep reaching for it. Technology can make a lot of people more happy, more healthy, more fulfilled. I say, "Let's do this thing." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykY69lSpDdo&list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4&index=37

Ray Kurzweil recently said he thinks it will probably happen a little before 2029 at the rate of process he's seeing, although, there are still some issues to be addressed like AI doesn't understand chains of reasoning and math very well yet but he says there are ideas of how to solve that.

What's the quote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?" Actually, Ray Kurzweil used the Harry Potter franchise and the magical abilities portrayed in those films as analogous to what will happen during the Singularity and beyond even suggesting we might, one day, even use quantum computers to copy past information (which is what we are). We are on the verge of seismic changes but while some of us have kept up with these changes, they will surely come as a massive shock to many. Think people losing it over Stable Diffusion and DALL-E is bad? Just wait. The luddites will be out in force in the next couple of decades.