This is the Motoman SDA10 15-axis robot (“for high level of dexterity and range of motion”) putting together an office chair. This is roughly the kind of thing we need for the Feynman Path assembly robot. (in case the embedding isn’t working on your browser, it’s here) There are several times when the Motoman uses… Continue reading Motoman SDA10
More evidence for a Society of Mind model, complete with economics: The Brain Economy by Michael L. Anderson over at Forbes. Together with fMRI, DTI and connectomes offer an unprecedented opportunity to understand how the brain operates. This is similar to learning about a city from looking at a map. You could easily find major… Continue reading Diffusion Tensor Imaging and the Economy of Mind
As I pointed out yesterday, the internals of a super-AI are likely to look more or less like some organization of human-level AIs (which in turn are likely to be Societies of Mind of even simpler ones). So just drawing a box around it and calling it “weakly god-like” doesn’t help understand or design it. … Continue reading Mind Children
Consider this marvelous story by Richard Feynman: (watch it now, this won’t make too much sense otherwise) Feynman and his friend John Tukey discover that they have completely different internal ways of thinking, or at least of counting, even though they are using the same words to talk about what it is they’re doing. Consider… Continue reading The Black Box Fallacy
It’s a question of some interest whether the Singularity will consist of just more exponential growth, or whether some superexponential growth mode is likely to happen (or is even possible), such as would be required for a real mathematical singularity. On the side of exponential growth, as I pointed out here, is the fact that… Continue reading Singularity or Bust
From nanowerk: Nanotechnology speeds desalination. This story illustrates both the best and worst of near-term nanotech research and reporting. It’s a valuable result in a very important application: “Current desalination methods force seawater through a filter using energies four times larger than necessary. Throughout the desalination process salt must be removed from one side of… Continue reading Nanotechnology speeds desalination
Previous in series: VTOL So, how close are we to flying cars? For specificity, let’s pick a technological bar to hurdle that answers most of the objections to the concept we’ve seen as comments on the previous posts: It should be relatively high-powered compared to current light craft. It should be STOVL for safety and… Continue reading Flying Cars: how close are we?
The usually reliable Michael Anissimov has claimed that I seem to think that “superintelligence will automatically acquire a favorable morality without any real work.” Now I’m not all that sensitive about such things; but it bothers me that SIAI, of all people, should fail to understand the basic parameters of the problem, and thus have… Continue reading Superhuman Psychopaths
cute video from nokia about what a nanotech phone might be like…
Previous in series: Why would I not want a flying car? How close to a true VTOL does a flying car have to be to retain the advantages we would like? If you have to keep it at an airport, you have to drive there and back in a separate vehicle, obviating many of the… Continue reading VTOL
