1st 2nd 3rd 4th Cosmist/Terran TV Documentaries
On August 19-20 1999, I spent most of two days being filmed at work and home by a German TV documentary crew on my CAM-Brain work, the CAM-Brain Machine (CBM) and particularly my ideas on the bitter Terran/Cosmist dispute that I believe will break out within 20-30 years. They produced it for Germany's satellite channel Pro 7, but hope to sell an english version of the program to Discovery Channel (50 milion viewers) and the like. The hour long program will contain interviews with the "Four Horsemen" (of the Apocalypse) (Dr. Ray Kurzweil, Prof. Hans Moravec, Prof. Kevin Warwick and Prof. Hugo de Garis (to move to Starlab in Brussels in Feb 2000). All four of us will be saying that AI (artificial intelligence) will overtake the human level sometime in the 21st century. There will be other people in the program, mainly on a robotic theme.
I was impressed by the teams work. They were particularly gifted with their lighting effects, making the CBM appear rather eery with green, red, and white reflected light. They took sequences of me looking Mephistophelean with my head sticking out between the two components of the CBM. If a still from that sequence is particularly eyecatching, I may use it as the main theme photo on the front page of my new web site at Starlab.
What I most enjoyed doing, was a dialog between my Cosmist and my Terran selves, giving pithy passionate arguments in favor of one view or the other. The crew had me looking at two different cameras with a reflected split screen technique, depending on which role I was playing. Visually it looked great.
I'll try to reproduce the dialog here.
Cosmist/Terran Dialog
Cosmist Hugo : 21st century technologies will allow humanity to build godlike computers.
Terran Hugo : But you Cosmists are prepared to take the risk that these Artilects, these artificial intellects may one day decide that the human species is so inferior to them that they wipe us out. Think of the cost.
Cosmist Hugo : Ah, but think of the prize. These artilects could be trillions of trillions of trillions of times more intelligent than human beings. They could have virtually unlimited memory capacity, a huge number of sensors. They could go wherever they like, do whatever they like, be superb scientists, they would be gods.
Terran Hugo : But how can you accept the risk that they might wipe out the human species, billions of people. Youre mad! Youre a monster!
Cosmist Hugo : How do I persuade you? Maybe with a parable. Imagine an extraterrestrial with godlike technological powers comes to the earth 3 billion years ago. He sees only bacteria, the only form of life then. With his magical powers he changes the DNA in all the bacteria so that its impossible for them to form multicell creatures. Therefore, no plants, no animals, no humans, no Einsteins, no Beethoven's 9th. Do you really want to freeze the state of evolution at the (with disdain) human level?
The Real Hugo : People ask me, "What are you in reality, a Cosmist or a Terran?" For 10 years I sat on the fence, saying "On the one hand, on the other hand", presenting the cases of both the Terrans and the Cosmists. But my friends started to claim that I was a hypocrite, that I expected humanity to choose on this issue in the 21st century, the toughest decision that humanity will ever have to make, so I should too, so I did. Im a Cosmist. I think humanity should build artilects. However, Im not a fanatical Cosmist. I can see there are strong arguments on both sides. In fact I feel this issue is so fundamental that it will dominate global politics in the 21st century. I can put the issue rather succinctly in the form of a slogan -
"Do we build gods, or do we build our potential exterminators?"
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Kevin Warwick and I were at two conferences together in Europe and the US in April/May 1999. We thought it might be a good idea to arrange a world press conference on the issue of species dominance, by writing a manifesto and presenting it to the world media, maybe in New York. We emailed Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil and invited them to join. Hans said it wasnt his style and Ray said such a thing would be premature. Kevin said he would back out if the Americans backed out, so he backed out. The idea just died.
However, Im now thinking that with this documentary, the time may be made ripe for such a world press conference and manifesto. Suddenly the issue of species dominance has become hot. I asked the german producer why he thought this is so. He said "Because of Matrix (the movie - whose basic premise is that 21st century machines use human bodies as fuel and keep the human brains amused and totally distracted from the parasitic reality by piping in neural signals that make the humans think they are living in the 1990s. (Actually, I think this is what the movie was about. I was so jet lagged when I saw it in the US in May, that I dont remember much of it, except that it glorified American gunitis).
I have a string of major TV documentary companies coming to Japan during the remainder of 1999 to film me and my ideas. Even business organizations are starting to invite me to talk, paying all expenses. A few months ago, I estimated that it would take about 3 years before the issues of species dominance and the cosmist/terran conflict become main stream. Im starting to think I was too conservative. Im now thinking it will be only a year, maybe two. With the web, ideas move so fast, that a crazy idea whose sole instigator is crying in the intellectual wilderness one year, is bathing in media floodlights the next. What a wonderful thing the web is.
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Update (30 Aug 1999) :
A week after the German crew, a Dutch TV crew from Holland's VPRO Television came for 3 days of shooting for a 2.5 hour screen time program on the theme of the body and immortality. They wanted to film me talking about my work, the CAM-Brain Machine (CBM) and my views on the enormous ethical problems which will arise over the Cosmist/Terran controversy. They said I will get 20-25 mins screen time. This is by far the longest so far and allowed me to go into considerable depth. We spent the first day going over the ideas, the second day shooting at my lab, and the third day, a Saturday at a beautiful temple garden (my favorite) in Kyoto, talking about the Cosmist/Terran dichotomy. The program will be broadcast 28th November 1999. One of the notable remarks from the Dutch program will be -
"This is my brain, my artificial brain. I believe this machine is the beginning of a technology that will have more impact on humanity in the 21st century than the development of the hydrogen bomb".
Update (18th Feb 2000) :
Two further TV documentaries on the Cosmist/Terran/artilect/brain building theme are now in the pipeline, with several more to come. On Wed. 16th Feb, two TV journalists from Discovery Channel UK came to STARLAB in Brussels, Belgium, to record my ideas for 3 hours. They intend later to attach images to my words and make a Discovery Channel program that will probably air early summer of 2000. I was told that Discovery Channel reaches 250 million viewers world wide. Wow. One of my life goals of getting the artilect threat message out to a general public using the media will be greatly enhanced by such an event.
A day later, two more TV journalists came to start a long term (1.5 years) study of 3 people working in the field of "intelligent machines" (Alexander (of Wizard, Magnus fame) of the UK, Koch of Caltech USA, and myself. The documentary will be for UK's Channel 4's Equinox (like UK's BBC's Horizon or US's PBS's Nova) and as much a personality study as on these three peoples' work. Equinox film crews may come 5 times over this long period to record progress or the lack of it.
Its an interesting phenomenon in the sociology of science, watching how
new crazy ideas, that a year ago were largely rejected, are now considered hot. A year from now I wouldnt be at all surprised that most educated people (at least in the english speaking countries) will accept the idea that "artilects may threaten human survival" as quite reasonable and not as a piece of dismissable science fiction, as is still the case with most people today. The tide is definitely turning. These TV documentaries would never have been contemplated a year ago. A year from now they will be yesterday's news. I attribute this speed of idea acceptance to the enormous power of the web. I also expect to see that the current flak I receive from the conservative fringe amongst my professional colleagues will die down to an embarrassed silence, when these colleagues perceive that these "crazy" ideas have become widely acceptable to the general public.