Terrans vs Cosmists = Gigadeath

Posted 29 Mar 2004 at 22:04 UTC by steve

Utah State University professor Hugo de Garis gave a lecture on March 25th about his theory of an impending war between Terrans, Cosmists, and Artilects that will result in Gigadeath for humanity. Most of these terms were coined by de Garis. Artilects are "god-like, massively intelligent machines" that will exterminate humanity or replace it with something better; Terrans are humans who believe Artilects should never be built; Cosmists are humans who believe Artilects should be built; and Gigadeath is what happens to humans when massively intelligent machines deal with them the way humans deal with mosquitos. Or to put it in SF terminology. Artilects are Berserkers, Terrans are life, and Cosmists are what Berserkers call Goodlife. The Utah Statesmen has the full story. And, for the record, de Garis considers himself a Cosmist.

It's a pitty..., posted 2 Apr 2004 at 09:15 UTC by outsider » (Journeyer)

That this clever guy has derived into the show business.

Utter twaddle, posted 3 Apr 2004 at 23:09 UTC by motters » (Master)

Oh please. De Garis has done some pretty respectable work on evolvable hardware in the past, but this stuff really is pure nonsense. This isn't a new fantasy - he has been going on about it for years. Terrans, Cosmists, Daleks, etc.

He also makes the common mistake of equating massive computing power with massive intelligence. If I had access to unlimited computing power tomorrow what would I do with it to produce a super intelligent AI? I don't know and I suspect that I'm not the only one. Increasingly raw computational power is not the problem, it's knowing what algorithms to use in order to produce a general intelligence.

You would think someone like De Garis would be more sensible. Personally I think these sorts of statements are just designed to attract media attention and possibly research funding.