Jim Baen's Universe

What's New in The Future And You

Columns

December 2009

Written by Stephen Euin Cobb

How today you can add telomeres to the ends of your chromosomes which may extend your youth by several decades, how today you can sequence your DNA and keep the data private on a thumbdrive, and how today some are striving to ensure that our future AI will be “friendly.”

Microphone in one hand and business card in the other, I gathered over a dozen interviews in New York City at the Singularity Summit the weekend of October 3-4, 2009. This was the annual conference hosted by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and featured a wide variety of presentations by people working on the cutting edge of science, technology and our future.

One nice thing about doing live interviews at a large public gathering is that people notice you interviewing and become curious. Some introduce themselves or go retrieve a friend or acquaintance who needs to get the word out about their project or product or cause. At one point Peggy Gregory, my assistant and photographer, had them lined up three deep waiting for their turn at my mic.

Greta Blackburn (an actress who appeared in many TV shows in the 80s and 90s such as Three’s Company and Dynasty, and several movies such as 48 Hrs and Yellowbeard, as well as the original version of the mini-series V) helped Peggy by introducing her to several noteworthy people we surely would have otherwise missed. One was Noel Patton of T.A. Sciences and another was the internationally recognized clothing designer Peter Nygard. Greta was so modest, and I was so busy interviewing while she and Peggy talked, that I had no clue of her fame until I got home and looked her up online. If I had realized, I would have interviewed her too.

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Recent Guests

Gregory Benford is a Nebula award winning science fiction author. He has a doctorate in astrophysics, and is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California.

Noel Patton is co-founder of T.A. Sciences, a company offering a product which adds telomeres to the ends of chromosomes and—by doing so—may extend human lives well beyond traditional limits.

Ari Kiirikki is Vice President of Knome Inc., the world's leading provider of complete DNA sequencing for private individuals (meaning of course: consumers).

Eliezer Yudkowsky is an artificial intelligence researcher concerned with the Singularity and an advocate of Friendly Artificial Intelligence. He is a co-founder and research fellow of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. He is the author of The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence publications Creating Friendly AI (2001) and Levels of Organization in General Intelligence (2002). His most recent academic contributions include two chapters in Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom's edited volume Global Catastrophic Risks.

Doctor Aubrey de Grey is a medical doctor known for his work in promoting human life extension. An author and theoretician in the field of gerontology, he is the Chief Science Officer of the Methuselah Foundation. He has been interviewed by 60 Minutes, the BBC, the New York Times, Fortune Magazine, the Washington Post, TED, Popular Science—even by Stephen Colbert for his comedy show The Colbert Report.

Michael Vassar is President of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and is responsible for the organization of the Singularity Summit. He has held positions with the Peace Corps and with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He writes and speaks on topics relating to the safe development of disruptive technologies. His papers include the Lifeboat Foundation analysis of The Risks of Advanced Molecular Manufacturing, which he co-authored with Robert Freitas, and Corporate Cornucopia, which he authored for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology Task Force.

Michael Anissimov writes and speaks on futurist issues, especially the relationships between accelerating change, nanotechnology, existential risk, transhumanism and the Singularity. His blog Accelerating Future has had over 4 million visits. He co-founded the non-profit Immortality Institute—the first organization focused on the abolition of nonconsensual death. He has worked or volunteered for, the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, The Methuselah Foundation, The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, and the Lifeboat Foundation. Profiled in the May 2007 issue of Psychology Today, he is a leading voice on the technological Singularity and was quoted multiple times in Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.

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Recent Topics

The Hayflick limit (the number of times a normal cell population will divide before it stops, presumably because the telomeres shorten, with each cell-division, to a critical length.)

A new product which may extend human lives beyond traditional limits by adding telomeres.

Ramifications of life extension.

Trends within the transhumanist community.

Artificial intelligence.

The Singularity.

Public resistance to AI and to the Singularity.

The need for “Friendly” artificial intelligence, and the probability of success in making it.

Why achieving AI using evolutionary software might be monumentally dangerous.

How we can all seek greater rationality in our thinking.

The benefits of greater rationality.

The limits of human reasoning, and why the percentage of humans today who can be considered “completely” rational is zero.

Cases in which the accidental discovery of extreme human genotypes have produced new drug therapies.

How you can have your entire DNA sequenced.

How soon personal DNA sequencing will drop below $1000 (and may even reach $100).

Diagnostic powers general practitioners will gain using personal DNA sequencing.

Why widespread personal DNA sequencing will make the discovery of extreme human genotypes far more common by making them far less random.

Speculation on ways the popularization of personal DNA sequencing might change online dating services.

How Knome Inc. is working to make personal DNA sequencing increasingly affordable and yet keep this data in the hands of the person who’s DNA it is, and not in any database anywhere.

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You can learn more about Stephen Euin Cobb here, or here.

And more about his podcast: The Future And You here, or here, or even here.