My comments may seem optimistic, but I actually think that, realistically, the most likely outcome is that the civilization turns to ash during this century. That is, unless

* people magically become impressively moral and intelligent OR
* aliens come and save everyone OR
* we create something superintelligent and benevolent that saves us.

The fact that I favor option #3 probably says something about my opinion of humanity.

I can see that we could never agree on the solution because, it seems, that you are an optimist, and believe advance tech can be used for good without the bad overwhelming it, whereas I believe we are all doomed and I would rather it were later rather than sooner.

The problem is you can’t make everyone comply with such restrictions. Maybe a few countries, or some of the smartest researchers, would understand the need to move slowly, but technological progress would still trudge on. Gradually the funds, hardware & knowledge required to create an AI would become lower and lower. In time it would be within the reach of small countries, or even sufficiently educated individual researchers.

Exactly how much time we have before it comes to that is debatable. Kurzweil/Vinge famously predict The Singularity (which implies superhuman intelligence) to occur around 2030-2045. Some others are even more optimistic (I seem to remember Peter Voss claimed AI would be possible as soon as 2015). Preferably we should have the “good” AI done before it becomes too easy to create-AI-in-general.

Military AI is problematic. It’s even more dangerous since you don’t really need human-level or superhuman AI for effective killer robots. A robot with, say, a wolf-level intelligence and heavy weapons could hunt down people quite effectively. Since military research tends to get more funding than people doing something “for the good of all mankind”, I would specifically emphasize supporting companies/institutes that are at least trying to do the right thing.

I’m not sure I understand your last comment about turning off air travel.

Gah, why can’t I keep my comments shor(er)?

I mean AI could save us, or it could kill us. I dare say that the first true use of AI will be military, as you suggest, and then where are we? Dare I mention the word ‘SkyNet’?

I would suggest the quickest route to self sustaining colonies would be to turn off air travel. Then we can develop AI slowly, with the time needed to make sure it is safe.

It seems that whether you want it or not, the entire race is at stake. It may take a few decades before we get to advanced nanotechnology, genetic engineering, AI, etc – but we’ll get there. And, if the current state of affairs in politics and technology is any indication, we won’t be ready to handle the technology. In particular, the persistent trend to use bleeding-edge research for military purposes, and the climate change problem, are very worrying.

So I say lets go ahead and develop the technologies that could “save” us before we develop technologies that will most likely kill us. And lets do it fast, since someone could create a genetically engineered plague tomorrow (unfortunately I can’t currently find the link that explained how this is quite doable).

That is why I focus mainly on AI, and maybe space travel. A beneficial AI could help us deal with most of the other dangerous technology, and space travel could let us limit the potential damage that any particular tech-catastrophe can cause (e.g. a genetically engineered plague wouldn’t kill off our entire species if we had self-sustaining colonies on other planets).

There are definitely dangers in AI, but I think it is even more dangerous to develop other potentially deadly technologies before creating AI.

For every utopian sci-fi concept there is one or more dystopian visions; for every benefit a possible downside. AI sounds like a good idea, as do self aware structures, etc, but on the whole the predictions for AI are not ideal for the human race.

It seems as though contributing to research may be accelerating the pace with which we travel toward the abyss and once we get there we may have no choice but to jump in and hope the robots save us.

I’m not sure I want to contribute toward a bookmaker that will ask us to stake the entire race on the outcome.