(2019-06-18) Opinion Theres Just No Doubt That It Will Change The World David Chalmers On Vr And Ai

Opinion | ‘There’s Just No Doubt That It Will Change the World’: David Chalmers on V.R. and A.I.. Over the past two decades, the philosopher David Chalmers has established himself as a leading thinker on consciousness. He began his academic career in mathematics but slowly migrated toward cognitive science and philosophy of mind. He eventually landed at Indiana University working under the guidance of Douglas Hofstadter, whose influential book “Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” had earned him a Pulitzer Prize

Chalmers is now writing a book on the problems of a technological future we are fast approaching: virtual reality, digitally uploaded consciousness, artificial intelligence and more

I think artificial general intelligence (AGI) is possible

say in the 40-to-100-year time frame.

I’m on board with people who say that we need to think hard about how we design superintelligence in order to maximize good consequences

I like to distinguish between intelligence and consciousness

How do you know whether another person or system in general has a mind?

For me, the way to get some purchase here is to think about gradually transforming yourself into an A.I. You be the A.I.: gradual uploading.

finally you’re a fully silicon system. If you make it a functionally perfect simulation throughout, then you’re going to be there till the end still saying, “Yup, I’m still home!” If it’s a proof, it’ll only be a proof for you. Someone else can still say, “I think you turned into a zombie.”

One can imagine not simply becoming the A.I. but nondestructively merging with it.

I value human history and selfishly would like it to be continuous with the future. How much does it matter that our future is biological? At some point I think we must face the fact that there are going to be many faster substrates for running intelligence than our own. If we want to stick to our biological brains, then we are in danger of being left behind in a world with superfast, superintelligent computers. Ultimately, we’d have to upgrade.

If you’ve got something that is independent of your mind, which has causal powers, which you can perceive in all these ways, to me you’re a long way toward being real.

Things in virtual realities, at least in principle, have all those properties

Physical reality is coming to look a lot like virtual reality right now. You could take the attitude, “So much the worse for physical reality. It’s not real.” But I think, no. It turns out we just take all that on board and say, “Fine, things are not the way we thought, but they’re still real.” That should be the right attitude toward virtual reality as well.

It’s kind of a multiverse. None of this is saying there’s no objective reality. Maybe there’s an objective cosmos encompassing everything that exists. But maybe there’s a level-one cosmos and people create simulations and virtual realities within it. Maybe sometimes there are simulations within simulations. Who knows how many levels there are?

There have already been some virtual worlds that have been recapitulations of the history of political philosophy. In the early ’90s, MUDs — multi-user domains — started off as dictatorships or anarchies

Most virtual worlds that exist now are corporatocracies, owned and ruled by corporations. Linden Lab owns Second Life, for example.

Isn’t the lack of democratized ownership a serious risk of virtual worlds?

Although, there are going to be, of course, many virtual environments. I don’t know whether we should think about this as, “You choose your virtual world and then you’re always stuck under the governance of the one corporation that owns it.” It may be more likely that we’ll chop and change between many virtual worlds quite regularly.

Maybe we’ll have an increasingly virtualized society. But that doesn’t mean everybody is going to be virtualized.