X-Message-Number: 3178 From: Ralph Merkle <> Subject: CRYONICS Marvin Minsky article in Scientific American: Will Robots Inherit the Earth? Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 19:29:06 PDT The October 1994 Scientific American has an article by Marvin Minsky. Minsky is on the Board of Advisors of the Foresight Institute. The title and the first few paragraphs of the article are: -------------------------------- Will Robots Inherit the Earth? Yes, as we engineer replacement bodies and brains using nanotechnology. We will then live longer, possess greater wisdom and enjoy capabilities as yet unimagined. Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. --Benjamin Franklin Everyone wants wisdom and wealth. Nevertheless, our health often gives out before we achieve them. To lengthen our lives and improve our minds, we will need to change our bodies and brains. To that end, we first must consider how traditional Darwinian evolution brought us to where we are. Then we must imagine ways in which novel replacements for worn body parts might solve our problems of failing health. Next we must invent strategies to augment our brains and gain greater wisdom. Eventually, using nanotechnology, we will entirely replace our brains. Once delivered from the limitations of biology, we will decide the length of our lives-- with the option of immortality--and choose among other, unimagined capabilities as well. In such a future, attaining wealth will be easy; the trouble will be in controlling it. Obviously, such changes are difficult to envision, and many thinkers still argue that these advances are impossible, particularly in the domain of artificial intelligence. But the sciences needed to enact this transition are already in the making, and it is time to consider what this new world will be like. ----------The last three paragraphs are: Whatever the unknown future may bring, we are already changing the rules that made us. Most of us will fear change, but others will surely want to escape from our present limitations. When I decided to write this article, I tried these ideas out on several groups. I was amazed to find that at least three quarters of the individuals with whom I spoke seemed to feel our life spans were already too long. "Why would anyone want to live for 500 years? Wouldn't it be boring? What if you outlived all your friends? What would you do with all that time?" they asked. It seemed as though they secretly feared that they did not deserve to live so long. I find it rather worrisome that so many people are resigned to die. Might not such people, who feel that they do not have much to lose, be dangerous? My scientist friends showed few such concerns. "There are countless things that I want to find out and so many problems I want to solve that I could use many centuries," they said. Certainly immortality would seem unattractive if it meant endless infirmity, debility and dependency on others, but we are assuming a state of perfect health. Some people expressed a sounder concern--that the old ones must die because young ones are needed to weed out their worn-out ideas. Yet if it is true, as I fear, that we are approaching our intellectual limits, then that response is not a good answer. We would still be cut off from the larger ideas in those oceans of wisdom beyond our grasp. Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children. We owe our minds to the deaths and lives of all the creatures that were ever engaged in the struggle called evolution. Our job is to see that all this work shall not end up in meaningless waste. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3178