I couldn't attend this year's Singularity Summit, but I had an opportunity to read the advance text for Worldchanging co-founder Jamais Cascio's "metaverse" presentation. I thought it was pretty rich, though (as I commented to Jamais) I think the Singularity is about as likely to appear as the golem, "an animated being created entirely from inanimate matter." I'll say more about that further on.
In his talk, Jamais usefully addressed the concept of the metaverse, or virtual worlds. I have issues with some virtual worlds proponents: those who in the past would spend 3-6 hours a day watching television, and now spend those hours co-creating virtual worlds like Second Life. If you thought it was healthy that people were spending less time watching commercial television in favor of sitting before more interactive, 'net-enabled computers and other devices, you should think twice. Advertisers are on to the amount of time people are spending in places like Second Life. They're looking for ways to create ambient ads in virtual environments, and in hybrid real/virtual environments -- a la the interactive "holographic" ads Tom Cruise's police detective character encounted while chasing a suspect through a mall in "Minority Report."
I'm not saying virtural worlds are inherently horrible: hanging out in Second Life can be pretty cool. However, we need to consider who's who's pouring money into them, and how they expect to get a return on their investment.
Then again, I know people who want to use virtual worlds to create environmental simulations that will clarify the impacts of various future scenarios. Specifically, they want to show why we need to transform our thinking about resources, and how sustainable systems would look. In some conversations, these folks have mentioned Second Life (or that kind of system) as a potential platform for this kind of modeling, but based on the thinking behind the Metaverse Road Map, I can see that a system like Second Life isn't the right fit. Sustainability modeling would likely be more effective with a "mirror worlds" approach, not in an immersive virtual world. Where Second Life has worked well is as a platform for serious games and simulations, such as the "virtual hallucinations" schizophrenia simulation, which is useful for medical professionals and families dealing with schizophrenics.
I could go on for many paragraphs about the potential issues with virtual worlds, but Jamais brought up the metaverse in the context of thinking about the Singularity -- so I'll follow his lead.
In case you don't know, Singularity in this context refers to an imagined point in our evolution where machines become "smarter than humans," or self-aware, and boost technological progrss beyond our puny human ability to keep up.
The concept of singularity is interesting in the way science fiction is interesting: we can use it to build models and parables that are relevant to right now, even if we don't accept that machines will ever have anything like human awareness. To me this talk about singularity is like suggesting that if we throw light switches in intelligent patterns over time, eventually the electrical grid will become self-aware. Computers are, after all, just complex sets of switches, patterns of ones and zeros, and if there's an awareness associated with computer processes, it's the generative human awareness. I think I understand the thinking behind singularity: if human awareness is a product of evolution that began with a single cell, then complexity beyond our understanding can evolve from simple origins. That doesn't necessarily mean that machines would evolve as humans have evolved, and become self-aware. (For that matter, how many humans are self aware?)
Smarter thinking about the technological future speculates that machines may seem intelligent and aware, but they won't have intelligence or awareness in a human sense. In fact, Jamais spoke about the degree to which evidently intelligent systems are still products of human-authored computer code, created with human biases that guide choices made within the development process. In the metaverse, you'll meet computer-operated avatars that will be difficult to distinguish from those guided by humans. And the environments themselves will be programmed with a simulated intelligence "that analyze our life logs, that monitor our every step and word, that track our behavior online so as to offer us the safest possible society," says Jamais, "or best possible spam.
"Imagine the risks," he goes on, "associated with trusting that when the creators of emerging self-aware systems say that they have our best interests in mind, they mean the same thing by that phrase that we do."
Jamais says the solution to this quandry is clear: "trust requires transparency." In the manner of open-source code, there needs to be an Open Singularity, which at the very least means opening the conversation to more, and more diverse, participants -- just as, in the Open Source world, we open projects to communities of participants and find ways to deal with the complexity that may result. In the process, all the problems of democracy can arise: amateurs mixed with professionals, many voices, contentiousness and disagreements, increased process overhead, leadership vacuums, and more. Sure, democracy is hard, but we do it because we think it's necessary.
Jamais has posted
the text of his talk, as well as some reactions, such as that of Dan Farber of ZDNet: "How a democratic, open process can be applied to a complex idea like Singularity," said Dan, "and the right choices made, remains a mystery."
How an undemocratic, closed process can be applied to a complex idea like Singularity, and the right choices made, is the mystery to me.
