The Horrifying Utopia of Prime Intellect

Biology ultimate technology? Comment on reddit thread

That is my take, this is potentially the ultimate technology barring something that manipulates physical law, though I wouldn't say biology but advanced synthetic biology to be more precise.

People tend to underestimate the power of what can actually be created when you transcend evolutionary limitations with cells.

Biology uses cells as main workhorses in many cases, but synthetic biology can allow cells to construct precise nano-structures organic and inorganic of arbitrary function. Structures that can be scaled to macroscopic dimensions if need be. Cells are able to drastically alter metabolic rate in nature, reducing it as needed, basically halting metabolism and allowing them to consume practically no energy for decades or little energy for even longer.

People tend to think in terms of just animals or plants in terms of the limits of synthetic biology in fiction. But potentially anything could be built by synthetic biology, a TV, a car, a computer, a plane.

Not only are cells able to produce electricity, but they are also able to consume electricity, not just light or chemical fuels. There have been closed systems with biological organisms only in-taking external energy able to recycle all components and continue functioning for decades or more. Self contained devices using cells can be made to recycle all wastes and not need exchange of atoms with the environment only the exchange of energy. Though such restriction can be lifted if it is more convenient as needed.

The thing is cells replicate, and could potentially be used to mass produce. Right now the efficiency of conversion from solar to chemical is quite low, and most plants have low resilience to hostile conditions, they are also not designed to be coupled with a computer for the production of arbitrary products. But cells could be coupled with the energy produced from fission or in the future from fusion, allowing unlimited replicative ability, the excess energy could be used to purify or scavenge any resources that were needed.

_reddit source thread link

Yet another comment on brain computer interfaces, abundance, and postscarcity society.

The thing is, AI will eventually accelerate the development of brain computer interfaces. Brain computer interfaces will eventually allow all the senses, all the sensations to be replicated digitally and stored accessible instantly. Like netflix and youtube do with video, or spotify with music. All sensations, taste, smell, touch, all realworld experiences will be recordable, shareable and able to be experienced again and again for free.

Control the brain, and you can eat the most nutritious food, and it doesn't matter how unpalatable it is, the signals will be intercepted and changed such that the food tastes as the best tasting possible food.

You can also eat thin air, and drink thin air, while consuming virtual food with all the richness of sensation and none of the calories. Even the most expensive of dishes, can be had unlimited as desired at a moment's notice, instantly, cost free.

It can also generate worlds of untold beauty and extense virtually. Sensations can be recorded, and shared even from other people. You can experience the emotions, the thoughts, the sense of making choices, the tastes, the smells, the sights, everything indistinguishable from living it yourself live in person, indistinguishable from real recordings, and imaginings of real and fictitious locations.

Say you take the world's richest person a 100 years from now, say he records his life from birth till death. A billion people could potentially experience it all, indistinguishable from being that person, and it would take virtually no resources to live and experience everything he did as vividly and realistically as if you actually were that person.
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The thing is eventually computation and ai will allow the development of alternate histories, to adapt to any possible choice. Such that you too could not only live the same life but make different choices, and experience realistic alternate outcomes or even an entirely fictional experience as a non existent wealthiest individual with free agency.

In any case there is no experience that cannot be recreated with computation, ai and a connection to the brain.

EDIT: People will be able to live in virtual worlds, and use augmented reality to mix the virtual with the real. Any fantasy or desire they have can be materialized by ai in digital form and transmitted directly to the brain at low cost.

People will share, and interact with each other while having access to the ability to exchange thought, emotion, and countless sensations and conjure up any food or experience or sight or sound, touch, smell out of thin air. A far more magical and richer social experience.

Today there are streamers. In the future it has been hypothesized there will be experience beamers, people that connect all their senses to the internet, and thousands or millions connect to their feed and feel all they're feeling.

But not everyone will follow experience beamers. There will be movies and interactive stories or games, where you're a bystander or you're a protagonist, in countless stories with wonderful worlds. Some of these experiences may last hours, other days, yet others may last years decades or more. Perhaps even your memories and personality will be temporarily blocked and overrided, if so desired.

Why would such tech become widely available? Because with the advanced manufacturing of the future it is likely to be practically free to mass produce. With full automation there is no need of employment, and basic needs can easily be met, population caps and regulated reproduction can ensure there are always enough resources to provide basic needs to everyone.

The wealthiest can still have an edge with having more physical land, better physical transportation, and the ability to conduct larger scale simulations with entire simulated billions of people to rule over with godlike power using their BCI. The less wealthier the smaller the scale and complexity of what can be produced, unless it is in a shared multi user experience where the costs are distributed.

Tech comment future potential hypothesizing

Comment done regards technological capabilities that may enable self-sufficiency at high levels  of technological capability, without the global supply chains, and hard to get components.   Which may be useful in things like future off world colonies, and may be necessary for true self sufficiency of such colonies, and easing their rapid expansion in hostile worlds.

Realistically there are only two possibilities, and they may not be that realistic depending on who you ask.

1.) Hard nano or atomically precise manufacturing, molecular machinery unlike that seen in nature able to self repair, separate and recycle component at the level of atoms, similar to life but supposedly with more precision. I don't think this is possible outside specialized lab conditions with vacuums, probably requiring low temperature.

2.) Extremophiles have shown biology surpassing the limits biologists believed for life, some organisms also were able to synthesize unthinkable ultra reactive substances that would react with almost any internal cellular component and cause an explosive reaction, that is one rocket fuel ingredient.

Hypothetically, there may be a way to combine our advances in manufacturing and information processing with biology itself, molecular machines, through extremely advanced synthetic biology using unevolved and unevolvable molecular systems. It depends on the limits of advanced synthetic biology, but I wouldn't bet against it.

Requires intermediate step of mastering de novo protein design, and multicomponent molecular machines, de novo complex multicellular organisms. Once the science develops it may take years for hundreds of specialists to design living machines for specialized purposes.

That is eventually you would have living machines able to gene sequence, dna synthesize, advanced recycling, advanced manufacturing with nanoscale precision(as seen in nature but with novel materials not seen in nature), energy generation and storage, advanced computing and data storage, etc.

The machines would be designed to exhibit negligible senescence or agelessness, able to last indefinitely, the systems would be mostly self-enclosed, utilizing energy to self repair and recycle wastes. In some cases they could be fully self-enclosed exchanging only energy with the exterior environment.

Such systems should be able to take arbitrary raw soil or raw matter, and decompose it down, break it down to atoms and molecules, and utilize the materials to build other copies of themselves, for growth, and for self repair.

Restricted section of 'future' internet, and increase in valid choice selection menu

We can imagine a future internet where systems generating minds are connected to each other and interact in highly complex ways.   It can be imagined, that in such a future internet where qualian language is used, vast possibilities are possible(qualian language:language involving the exchange of qualia, aka using patterns structured to generate qualia and interfaces to receive such).

IF we assume the universe is computational in nature, it may be that our experiences and the limits we experience within reality are the result of being within a region where such limits have been placed. 

 Technological progress may enable minds in the future to interact with each other in far more complex ways, directly connecting to each other, as mentioned.    Some may call the reality of this higher language and exchange of information as not real, but it may be the case that we may find that through such we can actually operate at a deeper level, and depending on the nature of our technological harnessing of the nature of existence, we may be able reach higher states of existence.

It may be that reality itself, existence itself, might have an underlying nature similar to an 'internet' like system, and our increasing capabilities are taking us in a direction enabling us to understand and communicate both with each other and any possible intelligence outside our domain at a level beyond our wildest dreams.

As the barriers and limitations of the real are shattered, as the 'present' shatters before the new 'present', the so called 'future', the world as is ceases to be, and everything becomes possible.

Reply over at kurzweilai regards virtual reality.

In the short term, desktop and mobile VR aren't even competing products, in the medium term, the mobile paradigm will probably win out, and in the long term we'll have nanobots in our brains.

I agree nanobots are likely if no solution is found for noninvasive vr ala sword art online. Could something like sonogenetics work, scale with future tech? that'd require genetic modification, but theoretically you could put larger custom special purpose proteins combined with complementary molecules to better aid an interaction with a device outside the skull.

But in terms of nanobots, I think what's likely is negligible senescence synthetic biology cells using unevolvable molecular elements such as complex antennas, and perhaps fiber optics, molecular electronics, etc.

It's room scale or don't bother

An advanced neural interface, brain computer interface, can shut down signals to the muscles, enabling you to control a virtual body, while an automated ai agent controls your real body. Allowing you to freely explore the current real world environment in a ghost like out of body experience or it could also allow you to move about freely even with a body of the opposite sex, and even with nonhuman bodies.

Theoretically if enough computing resources are available, it could instantiate fantasies upon the real world, by overimposing virtual photorealistic changes based upon your virtual body's actions, and being able to control all agents in the scene within this fantasy scenario. Effectively allowing any thought or fantasy to take place indistinguishable from real within your mind and without need of anyone's consent, all while your physical actual body's controlled by an advanced software system.-source

Brief comment on qualiange

Richard Jones pretty much offered indisputable proof of this on the nanotech front. The best that we'll end up with is a wide variety of narrow, weak AI's that can do better than humans at maybe 1-2 particular things. That's a far cry from most people's definition of "singularity." Read Giulio Tononi or Scott Aronson's works to see what I mean.-noam23,kurzweilai forums

The thing is synthetic biology is capable of more much more than natural biology. And it can probably replicate the best of our tech, such as optical fiber for long range communications. The myelinated axon is slow bandwidth digital channel of very high latency. An optical fiber could send far more information at far greater speed.

We also have to take into account what will happen with brain machine interfaces. Human communication will evolve to incorporate qualia, even never before experienced qualia. It will be like the difference between prelanguage animals and postlanguage animals, humans. When communication involves custom qualia language, able to transmit things far more efficiently and to provide intuitive grasp to pretty much any field. Can you imagine that? Even barring the reality that genetic modification even with just the presently available gene pool witll sky rocket iq, a qualia language will revolutionize the exchange of information between agents taking them literally to higher dimensions.

A collection of humans with native qualia language should be able to accomplish far more than humans with their more rudimentary language closer to the beasts, just as language has allowed us to transcend the beasts, so will a higher form of language allow for higher advances. I would call such qualiange.