I do think that space exploration is always going to be interesting because as humans, by nature we are always wanting to learn. I do, however, firmly agree that more focus should be put on enhancing life, rather than enhancing the next smart phone or the next robot.

Good Morning Charles,
I know nothing of Margulis' work (for me, Intelligence Amplification is merely Education but again I'm unfamiliar with Margulis' work) however, your last paragraph is succinct & spot on. We, humanity must work on what we have. In a secularist's (my own, thank you very much!) bent on an Old Testament verse, "The meek may inherit the earth but ALL must take care of it".

I don't know which would be harder, doing pure AI or augmenting our own intelligence with AI. Both have pitfalls. Pure AI strikes me as more workable because we have a full understanding of how machines work and hence can add layers of complexity to them based on that knowledge. We very easily forget how far we've come. Your cellphone has the computing capacity it took giant rooms of processors to contain, probably within your lifetime. What may seem unimaginable now might be commonplace in 60 years. Our brains, though we are learning more about them every day, continue to be the least well understood human system there is by far. In order to augment something, you need at least a working understanding of how it functions. Before we can insert a USB port in our ears, we need to learn a great deal about the brain.

Endosymbiotic theory, fantastic as it is to explain the divergence of prokaryotic and eukaryotic life, strikes me as not particularly useful here. Possibly the only comparison that can be made is that IF we successfully integrate computers with our physical bodies, we may eventually become something effectively different than humans, just as one bacteria with a cianobacteria that became an endosymbiont became less bacteria and more eukarya.

Geoengineering is something we have done almost literally to death. Seriously. I recently read a WA State Supreme Court decision about a 12,000 year old wetlands - which filters and purifies water far more effectively than humans can engineer - in Federal Way. The church that owned the property wanted to pave it over for a parking lot.

We have already graded, paved and re-channeled more ancient natural features of this planet than our tiny minds can imagine. Engineers have ruined the joint and are the vanguard of our march toward extinction.

AI research need not look for a replacement for human intelligence, in fact, i believe research is moving away from that idea.

I would think the ultimate goal is an intelligence just close enough to be able to do our bidding. What we really want are mechanical slaves, and the less close they are to Cylons the better, so they need not be fully self-aware.

Just aware enough to do what we tell them.

I think a strong argument could be made to say AI research is IA research. Increasingly we use technology to supplement our mental capacities (not all our memory is stored in our brains, we don't do all our calculations on our fingers- in a sense we are cyborgs). Enhancing that smartphone or programming that robot to perform more complex tasks on our behalf allows us to perform more tasks more proficiently. Is that not intelligence amplification?

Thoughtful and I am glad you are reading Margulis! Check out her videos if you can find them.
@2 I think the quote was from Vinge.
@3 This underlies a presupposition that we'll just keep on progressing, that Moore's Law will continue to hold (they're already 'cheating' on that one), and that we'll bridge the theoretical gap between machine and mind. We still have a very strange way of understanding communication--as a point to point transaction. We need to get over simplistic "brain as computer, computer as brain" analogies. And I think Charles meant just what you said about the endosymbiotic theory. We're already seeing reduced lines between what is clearly cybernetic augmentation and ourselves--yet these things are still tools to us. I'd venture to say this has affected us more than we know.

Hey Vinge fans, how fucking awesome is this statement:

"Focus should be placed on enhancing what life has already made, human intelligence, and not in making something that imitates or approximates the biological processes of thought—a robot that is more human than human, a dead machine that thinks like a living mind."

If you've never read Vinge, google "Vinge + Focus." Or better yet, read "A Deepness in the Sky," one of the most brilliant science fiction books ever written. (Second only to "A Fire Upon the Deep," also by Vinge.)

@Dirac, I just realized what your avatar is, love it. Princess Mononoke is my favorite Miyazaki film.

@8,
I never knew who Vinge was until now. Seriously. I really did just think of that quote. Thanks for the enlightenment. I shall read more of him. Sounds fascinating.

Vinge is the shit. But I think you misphrased something, Chuck. I believe the thing that rarely enters your mind is intelligence; it's certainly absent from all of your posts. Geoengineering, by the way, is an incredibly asinine idea.

Oh, and read "Rainbows End", by Vinge. It seems fantastic, but it's actually credible.

Arguably if the technological singularity continues it will still be a long time before humans can leave earth. One possible scenario is small nano-bot sized machines leave earth to explore the galaxy while those humans who do not upload their brains into computers are stuck on earth. For someone who is willing to put their mind into a tiny machine the logistics of leaving earth are much easier. For a natural human being the chance to leave earth is almost 0%.

Thanks, samktg. Yeah, I am partial to that movie too and I think Miyazaki is a prophet...of sorts.