| Hugo De Garis |
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He is more recently notorious for his view of eventual AI dominance over humans which has sparked debate and criticism, particularly among the more media-friendly members of the AI research community. De Garis's early studies were on Theoretical Physics , but he abandoned this field of research in favour of AI and Artificial Life . EVOLVABLE HARDWARE This technique, involving development and use of neurons using a 3D Cellular Automaton , seems to have been used with success to build simple functionalities like the Xor function, but, up to now, failed to evolve anything that could be considered as a brain, or even a serious robot control system. His current project is to assemble thousands of these 'brains' into a larger artificial intelligence architecture to make a functioning AI. Critics find that de Garis tends towards "quantity not quality" in asserting that the degree of complexity displayed within his evolved hardware is a breakthrough in itself, without acknowledging that the harder problem is to create systems whose complexity is actually functional and fit for its purpose, or indeed, any purpose. COSMISTS AND TERRANS De Garis predicts that one day intelligent machines (or 'artilects', as he calls them) will be far more intelligent than humans and threaten to dominate the world, resulting in a conflict between 'cosmists', or supporters of the artilects, and 'terrans', those who oppose the artilects (both of these are terms of his invention). He describes this conflict as the 'gigadeath war'. This scenario is very similar to common science fiction themes, such as found in the hit 1984 movie "Terminator". He has recently authored a book describing his views on this topic titled ''The Artilect War''. Cosmism, according to de Garis, is a moral philosophy that favors building or growing Artificial Intelligence and ultimately leaving the Planet Earth to the Terran s, e.g. Kevin Warwick and Bill Joy , who oppose this path for Human ity. In his Essay "The Artilect War", De Garis predicts that the Faction s will War to the death. De Garis relates that "just out of curiosity, I asked Kevin (Warwick) whether he was a Terran or a Cosmist. He said he was against the idea of artilects being built (i.e., he is Terran). I was surprised, and felt a shiver go up my spine. That moment reminded me of a biography of Lenin that I had read in my 20s in which the Bolshevik s and the Menshevik s first started debating the future government of Russia . What began as an intellectual difference ended up as a Russian Civil War after 1917 between the white and the red Russians." Accordingly, the war might be said to have begun at a Debate in Zurich on March 22 , 2000 . Some Technologist s, such as Bill Joy , Ray Kurzweil , and Hans Moravec ; a few Physicist s; and Mathematician s, such as Roger Penrose , have taken positions in this "war". QUOTES
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