How Does One Engineer a Paradise?

I finished my first book, Engineering Paradise:  Are You Ready?, a book that illustrates how current trends in social thinking and technology is changing our society in a fundamental way, recently.  After I finished writing it, I had an interesting thought:  though I described the many technologies that are already affecting change, I didn’t give readers a clear idea of what an ideal world may looks like.  The reason why our world is still full of inequalities and violence is because we are currently mired in obsolete infrastructures, social systems, traditions and ideologies that hold us back.  These systems have been around for hundreds of years, slowly changing to adapt to different social, political and economical movements.  These are hard to change because they are all embedded into our society and into each other.  Not to mention most people are employed and depend on the survival of each one of those systems for their welfare and livelihoods.  Any significant change in social structures are therefore scary to most, because individuals are afraid of what they cannot understand or predict.

Under these conditions, suggesting how our world may function in 10 or 20 years would be incredibly naive and speculative.

However, I was thinking about the following:  what if, strictly as an intellectual exercise, we imagined that all traditions, social resistance to change, social systems and institutions were just swept out of the way and we just build something better.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  It’s nice to dream about some sort of perfect world where we don’t need to care about how things really are.  That’s what science fiction is for, right?

That was the initial conclusion I had with the idea too.  But then it dawned on me.  Even though what paradisiac world we may build would be fantasy, at least it would be something we could shoot for.

 

One thing that I have learned as a serial entrepreneur is that if we want to achieve a project that seems too big to be doable, we still have a shot of achieving it if we have 3 things:

• A well-defined plan.
• Strong motivation.     
• A dedicated team of individuals that believe in the project and are willing to work towards it step by step.

So, I decided to write this book to paint a picture of how we could build the ideal future for ourselves.  Thus, I’ll prepare point #1 for us all.  At least I’ll be producing my version of it, supported by proper studies and professional knowledge from experts. 

Then, by publishing the book and directing other activities aligned with the goal of engineering a paradise, I hope to gather a large enough group of motivated people that believe in building an ideal world.  There are already several organizations that are working towards making the world a better place and I’m sure millions of individuals in the world wish they could contribute to such a great project. 

Are you one of these people?

Finally, with those two pieces in place, together, we can figure out a plan to engineer our current world and ultimately transform it to fit the end goal:  the ideal world.

I’m sure most of you have very different ideas of what the ideal world would look like and that’s fine, but in this case, we’ll want to build based on proper evidence.  Using proper research sociologists and other scientists have already documented over the years, I’ll illustrate what is fundamentally best for human beings.  Starting from that basis, I’ll elaborate on how nations could be ideally governed to ensure the people are in the best possible position to thrive.  After all, we have over 3,000 years of experimentation and trial and error under our belt as a society and now we’re supported by artificial intelligence to assist us, the Internet to connect us and sufficient comfort levels for at least half the world’s population to collaborate on our common goal.

Then, I’ll go into a full section detailing how such a governing system can be managed by the people and finally I’ll elaborate on how an ideal economy would work within this new innovative system.

I’m hoping this detailed plan on reformulating our society leveraging advanced technologies, will inspire many to work together, as a team, with me or in independent groups.  It’s all good.

Fundamental technologies 

If you haven’t read my first book, you may be a little bit lost in the next few chapters so here’s a bit of an update on certain technologies that will support most of what I’ll be discussing.

We have been playing around with artificial intelligence (AI) for the past couple years.  AI is not new.  In fact, it has been around for over 30 years but only recently has AI applications become part of our daily lives.  Not only toys used by large companies, research laboratories and governments but in our living rooms and on our smartphones.

It is like it was for computers in the 80’s.  For the first time families started buying them for their homes even though transistor computers had been around for at least 30 years.  Computers had become a commodity after years of companies improving the basis of the technology and finding ways to reduce costs enough to make the technology useful, small enough and cheap enough to be purchased by families.

Now, we have AI like Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Watson and Google Assistant, to name just the most popular AI in North-America, available to consumers.  They can understand native language and can connect to our smartphones, security systems, our digital information, home appliances, heating, lights and so on.  We can control these systems through our AI assistants, or by using our smartphones.  The AI assistants are intelligent enough to search the web for us, add items to our grocery lists, and learn who are proper family members or strangers in our homes or front doors. 

Today’s AI are learning AI, which means the more we use them, the better they can perform.  They are just like children learning about their environment and after a while, they don’t need as many explanations to achieve their tasks.

We’re also running automated devices and robots with AI brains.  The most obvious automated devices that will take the world by storm will be self-driven electric cars.  Most car manufacturers will start selling those on or around the year 2020[1], which is very, very soon.  These can be considered robots with an AI brain since they will recognize passenger voices, understand instructions and then be able to drive themselves on real roads, dealing with unpredictable road conditions and the public.  They just have wheels instead of limbs.

Self-driving cars will also likely be connected to the Internet, just like AI personal assistants, so they can access useful information and share with other AI-enabled robots and software in a networked fashion.  That will make them even more efficient and instantly learn from other self-driving cars on the roads, making them very good drivers and very safe faster than we can blink.  At the very least, they will be better drivers than any human can and keep improving 24-7 as we use them.

In the midst of these technologies supporting all industries from education, health, economy, government, manufacturing, and others, it is easier to imagine novel ways to structure our society than every before.  I think it’s a good time to give it a try.

Exponential thinking 

Here is something else to consider moving forward:  we must stop thinking in a linear way.  It is quite natural to do so since we are built to experience the world through our senses and our bodies are designed to seek balance (what biologists call homeostasis).  We are built to change, but change in our brain and bodies creates imbalances that our own biochemistry constantly tries to balance out.  The body’s rebalancing process takes time.  It never gets faster from generation to generation, so there are hard limits in how fast we can change our minds or adapt to physical situations. 

Socially, there are even more pressures towards linear thinking because everyone around us, ourselves included, measure time in the same small increments and we balance each other out at similar rates.  It is all tied into our biology as described above.

It’s no wonder when we start thinking about the future, we tend to see progress in a straight line, ergo if it took one generation to go from cell phones to smartphones, the natural thought is that it will take one generation to go from smartphone to the next generation of pocket communication device.

Unfortunately, technology is built following the Law of Accelerating Returns[2], a term coined by renowned futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil.  The law describes how progress not only depends on our linear creative selves, but it also depends on the body of previously developed technologies.  This creates an exponential growth curve.

Kurzweil wrote in his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near, “Technology goes beyond mere tool making; it is a process of creating ever more powerful technology using the tools from the previous round of innovation.”  Kurzweil studied different tools in different industries and the trend in each industry is exponential because every industry is using better and better tools leveraging the previous generation and tools from other industries.

Thus, productivity keeps increasing exponentially in each industry[3].

If we look at high tech innovation on its own, people work on different aspects, namely software (AI, smart systems, application tools), computer hardware (smaller microprocessors, quantum computing, organic computing) and robotics (more efficient servo motors, new materials, gyroscopes, miniaturization).  Then each one of those aspects are used by people to develop the other in a cyclical manner.  Better hardware allows us to use create more sophisticated software leveraging more information that achieves results faster (see Moore’s Law)[4].  This software is used by engineers to design better robotics.  Then engineers use the improved robotics to create smaller transistors at a faster pace and integrate them into new better computer hardware. 

The advancement of each component, hardware, software and robotics, are then used in other industries where we could illustrate other similar cycles.

The truth is, the world we’re living in is changing at an exponential rate.  We must then learn to think exponentially.

So, if you think it is impossible to engineer a paradise in our society within a single generation, you may be surprised.  Methods of communication, production and collaboration have never been faster and better suited for massive change.  And they too will become better and allow connectivity at an accelerated rate.

In some ways, since human beings are biologically linear, we must get ourselves out of the way by allowing this accelerated ace of change to occur, supported by intelligent technologies that are in fact improving at an exponential rate:  artificial intelligence.

So, I suggest we expect things will change faster than we can possibly imagine.  It takes a measure of trust but I’m hoping you will continue to read this book and perhaps contact me to collaborate on projects that will help move things along.

Check my website for some projects that I have started or some that are already underway.  

I’m also available for any engagement that would allow me to educate.  I’m leaving it to you.

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[1] Moore’s Law.  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

[2] The Law of Accelerating Returns.  Ray Kurzweil - http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns

[3] Technology Feels Like It’s Accelerating – Because It Actually Is.  Alison E. Berman and Jason Dorrier - https://singularityhub.com/2016/03/22/technology-feels-like-its-accelerating-because-it-actually-is/

[4] Self-Driving car timeline for 11 top automakers.  Dan Fagella - https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/04/self-driving-car-timeline-for-11-top-automakers/

Hitting the Brick Wall near Singularity

While discussing on the subject of Singularity according to Jay Kurzweil within the Xavier Group Ltd on LinkedIn, I was asked to comment on a phenomenon they called the "Brick Wall" where, as I understood it, humans will try their best NOT to hit the Singularity point where AI becomes more intelligent than humans.  Mostly because of religious groups, people in power, and the fear that these AIs will eventually treat us as an inferios subspecies.

Truly, I think this is very far from what may happen.  Here is my response.

Taking from the research of Paul Chappell who did a great job in his speaking engagements to pull out all sorts of evidence that fundamentally, humans are peaceful beings that only wish to have the basic requirements of living, and beyond that, be free, love and be loved, and live in harmony with everyone else.  He shows in his lectures that violence is in fact something that is conditioned by the people in "power", who themselves are at arm's length of the violence perpetrated, and direct good people down the violent road for their own selfish ambition.

This is actually very important when we consider AI.

It means that for the most part, us humans will create AI that are.. well, like us.  computers that aren't violent at all.  Right now, there are still people in "power" that try to control us.  In the most communications-dense countries like Europe, Japan and North-America, its getting harder and harder for the "powers" to control people.  The real information is literally at our fingertips and instant, and penetration of the truth through social networks just reveals the bullshit of the "powers".  So in these countries, where most of the highest tech is developed anyway, we're not really moving towards a system where we're going to build super AI's in the pre-Singularity timeline that will be agressive and out to destroy....  At least that is my hope.

The acceleration of technology and propagation of information into other less-developed countries will bring them to par with us and the population as well informed as us in just a few years.  Peter Diamandis of the Singularity University estimates 66% of people on the planet will be Internet connected in the year 2020.  It is estimated that almost all people will be connected by 2029.
So it seems to be going in a direction where super AIs on the point of singularity will be programmed to support humanity as they surpass our intellectual capabilities.

Psychologists today say that humans are wired to feel pleasure, to love and to be loved.  That's basic to our innards beyond food, sleep and security for us, once more a programmed survival instinct.  Therefore intelligent humans that have all those things feel content.

Therefore it can be assumed that AIs that are wired or programmed for work, dangerous missions, or, get this, deriving satisfaction from say creating tasty vegetables at a highest yield, will use their intelligence to achieve just that.

If we treat AIs just like people, their basic needs and programming cannot be changed so if we program them to get satisfaction from something we feel is boring, repetitive or mundane, that's what they will enjoy doing, just like we'll enjoy whatever we wish to do.

IMHO then and in conclusion, we are directing ourselves towards a coexistence with AIs.  There is also nothing preventing humans from improving on ourselves either mind you.  Heck, the scientific programmed AIs can probably help us out of pleasure too!
Cheers!

The Technological Singularity and the Future

According to Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis of the Singularity University, the technological Singularity is:

The point where Artificial Intelligence surpasses human intelligence. They estimate it happening in 2029.

Here is the original definition by science fiction author, Vernor Vinge, who described it as a point in time where “…we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

He continues:

“I think it's fair to call this event a singularity. It is a point where our models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move closer and closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs till the notion becomes a commonplace. Yet when it finally happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown."

So very enigmatic… and a little scary. In reality, even today we don’t really know what will happen near or beyond the point of technological singularity.

I discuss the subject matter in this video: 

Let’s examine some laws and human history for a bit.

Moore’s Law of computing says the number of transistors on integrated circuits, which translates into memory, speed, capacity, computer intelligence etc… doubles approximately every two years. This has been going on since the first computers appearing in the 1950’s.

Why is Moore’s Law’s computing power doubling every 2 years so consistent after over 60 years of computer improvements? Well, because we’ve been using computers to build the next generation computers.

If you are fond of math let’s look at how Moore’s Law applies:

The first UNIVAC computer in 1951 would be able to make about 2000 simple additions or subtractions per second. Of course, that’s way faster than any human can calculate. So UNIVAC was great for accelerating calculations and would not need any sleep. Therefore computers became a complement to our lives, allowing us to focus on the more creative aspects of work while the computers assisted in processing speed.

According to Moore’s Law though, every 2 years after 1951, the computing speed doubled. Therefore, for each 2 years after 1951, the amount of calculations per second would double. This means in 1971, 20 years later (10 2 year cycles, increasing the amount of calculations each cycle), the 2000 calculations per second in 1951 would have been increased by 2 to the power 10 (2000 x 2^10 milliseconds = nearly 2 million calculations per second). Let’s now warp to today, which starting off in 1971 is 21 2 year cycles further down the line, where the speed of computing has probably increased by another 2^21 times. This means about 4 x 10^12 calculations per second.

Well guess what, the fastest computer (the K computer) on Earth today is Japanese and is 2500 times faster than that at 10 x 10^15 calculations per second. That is a 10 with 15 zeros. However, our desktop computers are pretty close to the Moore’s Law’s predicted speed.

Ok, let’s now look at the future near the point of Singularity… The fastest computer will be 2^8 times faster than one in 2013 (singularity being predicted for 2029). That’s 256 times the K computer’s speed. I won’t even write down the number but there are 18 zeros now.

Feel outmatched by our little mobile devices?

Well you shouldn’t because our brain, though structured differently, can execute 2 x 10^16 calculations per second. You’re just not aware of all the power sitting inside your skull and it is attached to the rest of our body, which let’s face it, does a lot more for us than just compute. 2 x 10^16 calculations per second is currently more than what the K computer can achieve by a factor of 10.

So in 2029, computers will presumably be able to compute 100 times faster than our own brain, hence the theory we can make them intelligent machines, and not only in speed but in creativity too.

Now let’s look back just a little at what humanity has accomplished with the Internet:

- The Internet was really born in the 1960’s as a government funded project along with some private firms to create a stable distributed network of early computers. At that time it was a closed circuit and really just experimental.

- In the 1980’s, more government funds and private commercial efforts brought it to the public for the first time merging a few emergent networks together. This network was stabilized into a single system in 1995, creating the ISP system we know of today.

- In the mid 1990’s, the eCommerce boom and web site revolution generated massive amounts of available information discoverable on the Web.

- Google incorporated in 1998 with a single product, the Google Search engine, and dominated over the others because it was just a superior use of the available technology at the time.

- In 1999 Napster became famous for peer to peer network systems and caused lots of issues in the traditional music industry.

- Internet crash of 2000-2001 where Internet businesses were over evaluated and many perished, giving birth to some solid internet business models.

- 2001 to 2012. Growth and maturation of the Internet as a separate “world”. i.e. Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter are now places people “live”. Also, people can live complete virtual lives on the Internet through social and game software like Second Life, Entropia Universe and other 3D games where you can have a home, clothing, children and do all sorts of “real life” activities.

- In 2010 was even the first low orbit Internet connection made when astronaut T.J. Carter posted his first unassisted Twitter update from the International Space Station, expanding the Internet to orbital space.

The point is, it took us over 40 years to structure the Internet to a form of maturity when the bubble burst near the year 2000. Then it took only 12 years to go from online tool to immersive experience and carrying the Web in our pockets.

Mobile phone technology followed a similar trend from the 1950’s to today, where now our pocket devices are almost as powerful as our desktop computers and are fully internet capable.

Today through Skype, a free voice over IP app, we can place a free call to Japan on my mobile device and speak as long as I want for free. This alone was unthinkable 10 years ago when everybody wanted to become rich through the Internet explosion.

Today, I can share a video of an incident happening in the middle of nowhere and stream it directly to Youtube and have people and media alike around the world capture that as news within seconds. Youtube by the way was born only 7 years ago.

Today, 1 person out of 4 is connected to the Internet. That’s close to 2 billion people. It is estimated that by the year 2020, 66% of the world, more than 3 billion people at that time will have regular internet access and almost all of them will be accessing it from mobile devices to boot!

This means that 2/3 of the world will be able to get information, tools, software and much more from most other brains in the world. There will be no more secrets and there sure will be way more understanding between us, and a lot more people will be collaborating together on projects across borders.

Now let’s also look at the Open source movement. Prior to the year 2000, if you wanted to create software, you needed a company to do so and you needed to buy the software just like any other product. Now, most people with a little technical knowledge can create software on their own or very easily on their desktops. Right now, making a new piece of software requires a single person, a normal computer and in most cases free tools from the web and boom a few hours later, there is a new game, or application floating on iTunes , the Android store, or the web ready to be freely downloaded. Software creation has been roughly following Moore’s Law and has been following the same pattern of evolution as that of the computer and handheld devices.

This acceleration and building tech on top of technology is very exciting and brings us closer and closer to the moment of singularity we spoke about earlier.

Scientists have been working on nanorobots for years. These are robots that are small enough to enter the bloodstream, enter cells and even manipulate matter at an atomic level. This is very cool stuff where biological molecules are used as motors to move them around and DNA as power and memory device. Yet thanks to computer and software progressing fast they could eventually have a wireless connection, memory, reprogramming capability and the ability to think on their own intelligently. Because these little buggers will be able to manipulate matter at an atomic level, it means they can be programmed to replicate to handle bigger jobs.

Don’t worry, these are not expected to be in application until… well, around 2030 or so, where they will be smarter than the average human anyway, so they will probably not normally mess things up…

Imagine having a few of these things at hand. And say you want a new shirt made out of a certain non-allergenic material you like. Now what you will do is go on the Internet and look for the shirt program you want, likely programmed by some guys in their basement in Indonesia as an Open source project or for fun. Give it a bunch of junk materials, like recycling and garbage, some air and dirt if you have it, and it will reproduce enough nanobots to build the shirt in the color you wanted in a few minutes using the chemical structure you wanted (pollution free, allergen free and what have you) by consuming the garbage you gave it. Heck, if the shirt doesn’t fit perfectly, you can always order the nanobots to disassemble it to harmless chemicals, or even lunch. When their job is done you can order them into a little container for later use.

Using your imagination, we can think of other applications like food built from waste, surgery executed without knives or needles and power generation with absolutely no environmental consequence.

What does that mean for our society?

- If information is readily available to anyone at any time from any source, official or not.

- If Artificial Intelligence surpasses human Intelligence

- You can make anything out of anything using super intelligent nanobots

- People have the means to create software on their own easily through open source, free software creation tools and advances in computer power.

Why would we be working for a living?

Why would there be any need for people in positions of power?

Why would we have national armies or even war?

Why would there be a need for money in the first place?


We would be living in a state of harmony where technology would do all the hard labor, figure out solutions before there are problems and would essentially run all of our systems. Heck computers will likely achieve some scientific breakthroughs and create great works of art.

Not only that but the AI will be able to improve upon itself further, without our involvement. Heck, computers will improve faster without our involvement at that point.

People would be free to live peacefully with each other doing whatever pleases them, whether it is art, science, sports, whatever. Poverty, war, famine and harsh conditions are therefore a thing of the past.

Now some of you think that this is a dangerous time, especially if AI think for us. Imagery from movies like Terminator, iRobot and many others come to mind where the most powerful AI takes over and tries to enslave or annihilate humanity for its own good.

But I don’t think we can count on science fiction authors to predict everything correctly. After all, 1984 didn’t really happen the way George Orwell depicted after all.

I can’t predict what will happen. But look at the news and the apparent revolutions brewing in the world, for the most part peaceful. Things are changing. Fast, and for the most part the little guy is taking good decisions usurping the great powers that have until today been able to direct the populations along the wrong path.

It’s quite encouraging to see beyond the troubles we see today into a potentially very rewarding future.

Think about it. Think about your involvement in the new world. I hope, like me, you will working on enabling a bright future for us all.