Quoted from Tommy

Quote, but spell check --- Tommy


Long version:

Nancy? Where is my nose? Caspar has my nose.
Caspar Weinberger came in and grabbed my nose between two of his knuckles and proudly proclaimed GOT YOUR NOSE!
I found it quite funny at the time, and giggled uncontrollably, but he was called away before he could restore it, and now I have no nose!
Tell him I want it back before my mid-day nap.

Quoted from senders

the other side:

Hillary? Where is my cigar? Gore has my cigar.
Gore came in and grabbed my cigar between his thumb and forefinger and proudly proclaimed GOT YOUR PENIS!
I found it quite funny at the time, and giggled uncontrollably, but he was hidden away during the impeachment process
before he could restore it, and now I have no penis!
Hillary, show me the rainbow before my mid-day nap.

Quoted from Tommy

Are you having a stroke?

Quoted from bumblethru

From DISNEY?????????????????????

Quoted from Box A Rox

Don't forget Bigfoot!!!
Bigfoot was recently sighted in the Adirondacks... (so was Elvis)  

Quoted from bumblethru

i must have missed those DISNEY movies about bigfoot and elvis!!

Quoted Text

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH DOUG WOLENS, DIRECTOR OF “THE SINGULARITY”



“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

If you watch Doug Wolens’ latest documentary, “The Singularity,” the quote from Arthur C. Clarke is the first thing you see. It aptly prepares you for the 75 minutes that follow over which a truly impressive cast of scientists, futurists and philosophers discuss the uncertainty of what the future holds for humanity and, for some, argue why Ray Kurzweil and others have it all wrong.

If you don’t have time to read The Singularity Is Near but want a more in depth understanding of the singularity, this is the film for you. Like the phenomena it attempts to explore, it takes off at an accelerating pace. In its first moments we meet Mister Singularity himself, Ray Kurzweil, who summarizes, for the uninitiated, what the singularity is.

And then come the experts, over 20 in all. Wolens weaves the conversation back and forth between these men and women of rarified technological air, among them AI expert Peter Norvig, Foresight Co-Founder Christine Peterson, neuroscientist Christof Koch who collaborated with Francis Crick (of Watson and Crick DNA structure fame) on the nature of consciousness, longevity guru Aubrey de Grey and Richard Clarke who oversaw cyber security for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The breadth of topics covered in the film is truly impressive: artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, biotechnology, transhumanism to name a few. And of course no discussion about the singularity is complete without considering the prospect of a day when machines become conscious – what does that even mean and, well, should we be worried about it?


AI expert Peter Norvig offers his thoughts on what it would take for machines to gain consciousness.

I spoke with Wolens recently about the film which is now available on iTunes. He started researching the singularity heavily in 2000, reading Kurzweil’s and other’s books, reading everything he could find online and conducting his first interviews. But 13 years ago, at the start of his enlightenment, like most back then (and many now) the singularity was something he knew nothing about. But a fortuitous moment while on a flight to New York to promote one of his films changed that. Flipping through an issue of Business 2.0 magazine Wolens encountered a quote from Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines. Immediately fascinated, he got off the plane, made a beeline for St. Mark’s book store, picked up the book and proceeded to devour it over the next three days. “I thought this was the coolest thing,” says Wolens.

And so the digging began. “It was a tremendous amount to put together that is cohesive and engaging. It’s a story, it’s not just stuff thrown at you.”

The film is broken up into four major parts titled: Conscious Machines, Neuroscience, Techno-Utopia and Post-Humanism. It’s complex stuff. The Neuroscience segment, for example, discusses how the merging of biotechnology and nanotechnology move us toward transhumanism, or the joining of man and machine. But despite its complexity, Wolens does a great job of moving between speakers in a way that makes it feel like a conversation, like a meshing out of the topics that might go on in our own minds, albeit expressed much more expertly and eloquently. And he didn’t just want to put a textbook on the big screen. He wants the audience to go away feeling as though they know these people who ponder these thoughts. “It’s not just the things they say, it’s who’s saying what.”

Having explored so many ideas with these great minds, I wondered what Wolens might’ve found particularly interesting during the making of the film. He spoke about the essence of what makes us human, and what it would take to make machines humanlike.

“It’s funny, when I was talking to all the consciousness scientists and
philosophers they would say, the only thing I can tell you for sure is that I’m
conscious. I can’t tell you if you are. But they do go on to say that I will
assume your conscious because you look like me, because you have the same lineage
as I do. So there’s that connection that we have that makes us human. And there’s
something that gets lost when you talk to people who say that as soon as we get to
X number of computations per second then we’ll have computers that can mimic the
brain. That always bothered me. What is the definition of intelligence? What is
the definition of human, and what do we do as humans? One of the things we do is
we empathize with each other. And I think that gets lost so much in Singularity
circles. If we’re going to replicate the brain we have to replicate the things it
does not the things it can do.”


Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warns that, while technological development moves fast, policy guiding that development isn’t moving fast enough.

Wolens admitted that he is a little uneasy about the idea of a conscious – and possibly competitive – robot. But then he shrugged and quoted what environmentalist and author Bill McKibbon argued in the film: “It’s not that we should be concerned that something’s gonna go wrong, we should be concerned that something’s gonna go right.”

As many Singularity Hub readers are no doubt aware, not everyone is receptive of the idea of the singularity or compelled to explore the finer points of its approach trajectory. Wolens found this out the hard way. Despite a solid résumé – his short film “Happy Loving Couples” made the screen at the Sundance Film Festival and another film, “Butterfly,” about a woman who sat in a redwood tree for two years to prevent it from being cut down, was featured on PBS – investors were cool toward a documentary that delved into what they viewed was too speculative.

“They laughed at me. They said you can’t make a movie about the singularity. It’s science fiction.” Try as he might Wolens could not find funding for the film. But he was so committed to the film that, in the end, he paid to have it made himself.

And now that it’s completed, Wolens is using technology to distribute the film in a way that was impossible a couple decades ago – by himself. In addition to iTunes the DVD and Blue-ray discs are available at thesingularityfilm.com.

At the end of his travels, having met the people he met and explored the concepts he’d explored, I wondered how Wolens felt about the singularity. Was he excited about it or did it give him a sick feeling to his stomach? He answered the question by sharing a concern that many people share about, not just the technology of the future but today’s technology as well.

“I’m a humanist. That is the most important thing and I worry that as we become more and more entrenched in our technology, more and more connected to our technology we lose a sense of our humanity.”



The_Singularity_trailer from doug wolens on Vimeo.

This entry was posted in AI, Art, Cyborg, Gadgets, Genetics, Longevity And Health, Robots, Singularity and tagged Documentary, doug wolens, Film, futurist, peter norvig, ray kurzweil, Singularity.

Quoted Text

THE FILM

Keep up to date with film release information



The Singularity is defined as the point in time when computer intelligence exceeds human intelligence. This notion of superhuman machines has long served as fodder for tales of science fiction. Yet most scientific leaders argue that these changes are inevitable, based on the accelerating rate of technological progress.

Clearly, some emerging technologies could have unknown consequences that could lead to catastrophic events or be abused for malicious purposes.

While we cannot be certain of what our future brings, it is nonetheless important to understand the great strides being made in fields such as nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and molecular biology, and how these technologies will radically alter the way we live. Inevitably, the question arises: what kind of humans do we want to become?

Director Doug Wolens speaks with leading futurists, computer scientists, artificial intelligence experts, and philosophers who turn over the question like a Rubik’s Cube. Those who insist this paradigm shift is only decades away emphasize that we’re on the cusp of creating nanotech machines that patrol our bloodstream and repair cellular damage, athletes with jacked-up genetic code who sprint like gazelles, an Internet that downloads directly to the mind, and medical labs with computer-replicated brains working by the thousands to cure disease.

Ultimately, if we become more machine-like, and machines more like us, will we sacrifice our humanity to gain something greater? Or will we engineer our own demise? Even if the answers are impossible to know, THE SINGULARITY makes clear that we cannot postpone addressing the questions.

The down-to-earth and visually fun animations created by Jerry van de Beek and Betsy de Fries of Little Fluffy Clouds, illustrate the complex ideas with clear and simple artistry.  These animations build upon our past notions of the future and playfully complement the talking-head interviews.

The film’s score, composed by renowned cellist Chris Lancaster, resonates to the viewer’s core.  Wanting to stay away from heavy-handed music and sound cues, Wolens and Lancaster collaborated to create a cohesive sound that reflects the film’s sensibilities and aesthetics.

THE SINGULARITY is a comprehensive and insightful documentary that examines technology’s accelerating rate, and deftly addresses the resulting moral questions.

Quoted Text

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

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I first learned about the Singularity concept in 2000 while on the road self-distributing my last documentary BUTTERFLY (about the young woman who sat in an ancient redwood tree for two years preventing it from being cut down).  Kurzweil’s argument that the rate of technology advances exponentially sounded reasonable. As I read more about the science involved I was pretty impressed with the arguments, especially having grown up in an age when we were taught that science could solve all problems.  I drank the Kool-Aid and thought that the singularity would make an interesting documentary.  But when I discussed this idea with my colleagues and many people in the film community, pretty much across the board everyone laughed saying this was sci-fi, not a subject for a serious doc.  In 2000 no one I spoke with had even heard of nanotechnology.

Since that time I continued researching the underlying science and began to talk with many people in the small future science community.  The past 12 years have seen radical future technologies moving from marginal concepts toward mainstream technologies.  The community itself has grown from a handful of individuals to hundreds of organizations and associations involving leading members of the scientific community.  Three years ago, the Singularity University (supported by Google and Microsoft) opened its doors at NASA Ames in Silicon Valley.  Roadmaps to these future technologies were being created and the building blocks put in place.

Seven years ago, despite a lack of funding, and with the help of my dear friend and cinematographer Mark Woloschuk, I decided to move ahead with the project and just start shooting interviews. I met with Ray Kurzweil, (The Singularity is Near, 2003) and was so impressed with his forecast of “spiritual machines,” amplified and augmented intelligence, and living forever on a silicone substrate.  I was introduced to leaders in the fields of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology.  Though not just around the corner, these technologies were clearly real and would someday be part of our lives. Computers are getting faster and would someday be more capable than our brains (in some way they already were), and advances in neuro-engineering were well on a path toward merging these technologies with the human body.

I ate it up and talked with anyone who would sit down with me.  I supported the handful of future science organizations and attended singularity conferences. I was in awe of the promise that science could really solve humanity’s shortfalls; who wouldn’t want a better life for the future?

As I dove deeper into the science involved with creating greater-than-human intelligence and augmenting our own intelligence, I wasn’t clear how the leap would be made to go from intelligent machines to conscious machines, and so I decided to talk with some experts in the science of the brain and consciousness.  But my inquiry into the science of consciousness raised more questions than the answers I had original sought. And while great strides have been made in the study of consciousness, there is in fact very little known as to what consciousness is and how it works.  And what are we as humans if not conscious?  Perhaps that’s one of the most important aspects of being human:  Our ability to be present and experience.

Singularity advocates argue that consciousness is just another problem to solve or that it will just happen when a system is sufficiently advanced. But I was not too sure.  The promise of this new future began to lose its luster.  I started to see holes in some of the arguments and I began questioning the philosophical and moral implications.  If smarter than human computers were created, how would they treat their human creators?  Would everyone have the means to augment their intelligence or just the rich?  What would happen if something went wrong with these super powerful technologies and destroyed everything on the planet?  Or if these powerful technologies got in the wrong hands and were maliciously used?  Maybe the singularity wasn’t such a good idea.

I continued my research, met with some government leaders and philosophers and inquired as to how we as a society were preparing for these technological breakthroughs  (I was so psyched to get an interview with Leon Panetta and Richard A. Clarke).  It was scary to learn that for the most part, these technologies were unregulated and that the government was actually capable of only minimal oversight.  And even if these technologies didn’t destroy the planet, the one question that kept arising was: what role do we have in creating this future?

With new questions raised and notions of a dystopic future, I went back to many of my original interviewees and discussed these possibilities.  Once again I was buoyed by the lofty goals and promises of science but I remained unsure of their certainty.

I began editing four years ago with more than 100 hours of interviews and an unclear picture of the future.  As with each of my previous feature documentaries, my goal was not tell the viewer what to think.  Instead I wanted to guide the viewer through the sophisticated concepts in a way that most people could understand, without dumbing it down or condescending to the lowest common denominator.  And I certainly didn’t want to simply sensationalize the ideas and create a film that lacked my moral and philosophical underpinnings.

As I did with my previous feature documentaries, I decided to proffer the arguments through interviews and leave the viewer to make his or her own determination as to whether these technological advances are good or bad for humanity.  And rather than just hear the discussion, the viewer gets to sit with each interviewee, not just take in what they say, but who they are as experts and as people.   Just as in real life, the viewer brings his or her own picture of the world to the film and draws their own conclusions about the goals of each interviewee.  It’s as if the viewer gets to meet each person in the film and sit with them as individuals, not just characters in a story.

In order to help show the story and complement the various interviews I decided to use animation as much of these technologies were truly in the future and not yet a reality.  Also, I was hesitant to simply show state-of-the-art technologies as they clearly would be antiquated in just a couple of years.  I found Little Fluffy Clouds (a local animation team) that was able to simplify these complex ideas in a visual way.  These animations build upon our notions of the future and the promises of technology.  They are sometimes fun and silly so as to balance the tone of film’s subject matter, giving the viewer an ability to sit with, rise and fall with the storyline, and digest these profound issues.

I also knew that I didn’t want to score the film with heavy-handed music and sound cues.  Three years ago I met Chrizzy Lancaster, a composer and cellist who was working with Bill T. Jones Dance group.  The sounds that Chrizzy created with his cello resonated to my core (similar to my feelings about the film) and I knew he’d create a score that reflected my sensibilities and aesthetics.  Chrizzy and I sat together in my apartment for just two days and with his one cello, two amps, many pedals and switches that he operated with his feet as he bowed, plucked and banged on his cello, we recorded a score that supports the film and helps lead the viewer without overpowering the interviews.

Over the last year I tweaked the film with the support of friends and colleagues.  There is so much to tell about the singularity and the promises (and perils) of these radical future technologies.  I know that I could not tell it all.  Not only would that be impossible, it was not my goal. But I did find a balance between being comprehensive, entertaining, and being palatable for most viewers.

My goal for this film is to excite people that have an interest in deep questions regarding what it means to be human, their place in the world, and about future technology generally.  Sci-fi buffs will undoubtedly feel at home with many of the conversations within the various storylines.  But beyond sci-fi, The Singularity is also intended to reach science and technology professionals and raise the bar as it regards scientific inquiry, as well as once again excite young adults with the promise of science that I was raised with as a kid.

While it is clear that we cannot be certain of what our future brings, it is nonetheless important to understand that the great strides being made in technologies (such as nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and molecular biology) may in fact radically alter what it means to be human and that is up to us to decide what kind of humans we want to become.

–Doug Wolens

Quoted from bumblethru

"Read everything, listen to everybody, don’t trust anything unless you can prove it with your own research."

Quoted from Box A Rox

It appears that Cicero disagrees with your thread, but his convictions are too weak to disagree
with your view on this thread.  
He only disagrees when I quote your post.  

Weak convictions... I'm not surprised.  

Quoted from CICERO

Ahhh..Box making his own truths up again.  In box's little mind, the absence of evidence helps him make his own truths.