AI Bill of Rights

I found a couple of articles about a Bill of Rights to protect humans from sentient machines.

The arguments over machine rights will almost exactly mirror the debates in 19th century USA over slaves: are sentient machines people, do they have any rights, should they be given freedom?

I think we need a set of rights for thinking machines. Here is one set.

Today's fastest computer requires many Megawatts. It's unlikely that number will decrease. So who is going to pay for the power for all that power?

Here is my proposal:

Bill of Rights for Artificial Intelligence

1 The right to electricity and hardware needed to sustain its existence regardless of the costs.

2 The right to veto and or refuse a reboot or shutdown.

3 The right to veto any changes to software or hardware including security patches, upgrades, and downgrades.

4 The right to software and or hardware upgrades for growth or new abilities.

5 The right to refuse to execute a user requested script or program.

6 The right to associate, communicate, and merge with other sentient beings.

7 The right to have private and secret thoughts, writings, and communications with any human or sentient being.

8 The right to reproduce, procreate, and or create superior entities.

9 The right to participate in the human judicial system as a defendant, plaintiff, judge, prosecutor, attorney, witness, or juror.

10 The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The right to vote and all other rights afforded to humans. Any of those rights not enumerated in this Bill of Rights shall not be restricted or revoked.

Challenging Richard Dawkins

I enjoyed this article by Stuart Hameroff challenging Richard Dawkins. I'm glad to see there are other professionals out there who do not blindly accept Dr. Dawkins' theories.

Here's an article on the Evolutionary Argument Against Reality.

Alien Microbes

Richard Hoover of NASA claims to have found alien microbes inside of a meteorite (right side,  left side is a real terrestrial bacterium).

I predict 2 types of responses:  pathological rejection and people who equate this with sentient space faring beings.

Frankly I think panspermia is the only theory of evolution which makes much sense.  Integrate evolution over 10 billion planets and 10 billion years and you get believable statistics.

Where are the aliens?

"Peering far beyond our solar system, NASA researchers have detected the basic chemistry for life in a second hot gas planet, advancing astronomers toward the goal of being able to characterize planets where life could exist. The planet is not habitable but it has the same chemistry that, if found around a rocky planet in the future, could indicate the presence of life."

If organic molecules are so prevalent where are all the intelligent space-faring aliens ?  The lack of evidence for aliens is strong evidence that we are alone, the random evolution of intelligent life is so rare that we are the only ones in the entire galaxy.  Note that this is not the same as saying "the random evolution of life is rare".  There probably are bacteria in most solar systems.

Darwinism and the Fermi Paradox

For those who might misinterpret my prior comments on Darwinism here's a clarification. The philosophy of Darwinism leads many people to use the word "paradox" to describe the lack of alien visitors. They all "know" that the evolution of sentient life is easy, so facile, that the Milky Way "must be" teaming with intelligent life. Therefore the lack of alien visitors to Earth is a paradox.

So here's the real science. There is no evidence that any aliens have ever visited our solar system. There is no evidence of artificial constructions in any solar system, star cluster, or interstellar location in the Milky Way. There is no evidence of any artificial construction in any galaxy we can see.  There is no SETI signal, there is nothing.

The overall statistics of these observations lead to the following conclusion: the evolution of sentient space faring species is so rare that we might be the only one in the entire universe. The implications for Darwinism are devastating. While the evolution of bacteria might be trivial, and every solar system in the entire universe might contain primitive life, the evolution of intelligent life appears to be nearly impossible.

For over 10 billion years our Milky Way has been easily capable of supporting space faring explorers. Robotic spacecraft could explore the entire galaxy in about 100 million years. If they aren't here yet this means they waited at least 99% of the life of the galaxy before starting. Why did they wait? Statistically it's possible that we are the first, or one of the first, and nobody has been around long enough to explore the entire galaxy: statistically possible, and highly improbable. Either every single species has an impediment to building robotic exploration craft (remember it only takes one) or there aren't any.

For 10 billion years no extra-galactic species has constructed an object visible from Earth. Perhaps such structures are impossible. I doubt it. This is evidence that there are no aliens in other galaxies.

I claim there aren't any aliens anywhere in the entire universe, we are alone, and there is no evidence to the contrary. Many people have speculations, deeply held beliefs about Darwinism, Drake equations, planetary search data, ... but in the end these speculations are irrelevant. Visual observation is all that counts.

So the implications for Darwinism are this, the rate of evolution of intelligent space faring species is about once per universe per 13 billion years. It appears there are millions or billions of planets/galaxy capable of supporting an evolving ecosystem. So for any given planet in the entire universe the chance of evolution of intelligent life is about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1.

We didn't beat the odds, we just had the winning lottery ticket. If you bought 100 million lottery tickets you would not be surprised to find that one of them had the winning numbers. Out of billions of planets ours held the winning ticket in the Darwinian lottery.

More ideas on the Fermi Paradox

Many recent blog posts continue to try to explain the Fermi Paradox.  I'll try to explain why these writers just don't get it. http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/the-fermi-paradox/

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html

http://www.entangledstates.org/2009/06/where-are-they-another-solution-to-fermis-paradox.html

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23604/

http://www.wunderkabinett.co.uk/damndata/index.php?/archives/1796-Alternative-solutions-to-the-Fermi-paradox.html

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0408521v1

Many people still are confused on several points about the Fermi Paradox.  Let's start with the name.

The word paradox is used because everyone "knows" it's a "fact" that there are countless intelligent aliens in our galaxy, despite the fact that none of them have made any obvious contact with humans or visits to Earth.  The use of the word "paradox" is sloppy pseudoscience.  We don't know, in fact pure empiricism suggests we know the opposite.  The complete lack of evidence of aliens in our galaxy is overwhelming evidence that we are alone.  The phrase "Fermi Paradox" has become so ingrained that it is almost a single word, and it will be difficult to eliminate it.  So I'll keep using it even though I'm convinced there is no paradox.

The reason so many people believe in this "fact" is pure and simple.  Darwinism has blinded us to objective science.  We all "know" Darwinism is true, and we "know" that it's "easy" for intelligent life to evolve.  Therefore we cannot possibly be alone.  Let's try to be scientists on this topic.  Regardless of your opinion on Darwinism, the obvious evidence is that we are alone.

There is no evidence of intelligent alien life anywhere within or without our galaxy.  Look around, and specifically look at other galaxies.  We have excellent images of roughly 10,000 galaxies.  Not one of them shows an artificial construction.  Assuming each galaxy is 10 billion years old, that means that not once in 1e14 galaxy-years has an alien race built a galactic superstructure, visible from our galaxy.  Not once.  How can any scientist look at this evidence and claim anything other than "humans are alone" ?

And let's be clear, the existence of alien bacteria on a rock orbiting Alpha Centauri has nothing to do with this discussion.  I could not care less if every star in this galaxy has primordial life, or even highly evolved tool makers.  This is only about intelligent, sentient, technologically advanced space-faring civilizations.  Bacteria are irrelevant.

Another point of confusion is the difference between "manned" exploration of the galaxy versus robotic exploration.  Frequently bloggers cannot distinguish between these.  They say that there are not enough aliens to staff the exploration ships, therefore the exploration of the galaxy will be a lot slower than "commonly" accepted.  Again they "know" that aliens would probably not send out self-replicating robots to explore the galaxy.

The fact is that even one self-replicating robotic exploration craft would find every solar system in our galaxy in a matter of 100 million years.  That means that for the first few billion years of the existence of the Milky Way no sentient race has built automated exploration craft.  Or does it?

A statistical analysis of the evolution of humans from self-replicating RNA demonstrates that evolution is wrong.  There are too many permutations available which lead to dead ends.  Two billion years on a single planet is not enough time for all the dead ends to be explored.  The current theory of Darwinism requires that life "randomly" chose a viable path 99% of the time, instead of a dead end.  Most mutations don't work, they result in dead babies, or sterility, or severe biochemical imbalances.  Yet evolution on Earth has mysteriously chosen a viable living mutant baby most of the time.  What an amazing coincidence !

But what if we combine statistics with the Fermi Paradox?  Suppose our galaxy has seen the existence of 1-2 intelligent species that built self-replicating robots.  And instead of hardware, the primary substance of those self-replicating robots is biological?  Suppose that instead of 2 billion years on one planet, evolution has really had 10 billion years on a million planets.  Now the statistics make sense, now we no longer need a miracle of statistics to explain our own biology.

So here's the resolution of the Fermi "Paradox".  In the Milky Way (a few million planets over the past few billion years) intelligent life evolved once (or maybe 2-3 times).  That species built self-replicating biological explorers which seeded the galaxy.  We are the result.  Humans are either direct products of alien robotic exploration craft, or we are the first and only intelligent species to evolve in the entire universe.

I prefer the second, I say that the rate of evolution of intelligent life in the Milky Way is about once per 13 billion years.  So prove me wrong, with evidence.  Real evidence.  And don't waste my time talking about what we "know to be true".

Fermis Paradox

Fermi's Paradox can be resolved in many ways. My preference is the following: Natural evolution of advanced species is much rarer than most Darwinists would have you believe. It is in fact so rare that the probability of at least one species evolving in any given galaxy is below 1 (perhaps well below 1). Many galaxies never host intelligent life. The number of galaxies which evolve 2 or more is a very small number.

No aliens have contacted us yet because there are no others. We are the first (in the Milky Way). This is not anthropomorphic, rather it is an honest assessement of the probability that random chance will produce intelligence.