How to prevent AI from ‘annihilating humanity’ using blockchain

Ben Goertzel has devoted his beingness to processing an artificial wide quality — and outlines however helium plans to massively standard blockchain to power it.

When he’s not moving connected hastening humanity’s unreserved toward the Singularity by creating an artificial wide quality (AGI), Ben Goertzel plays successful a jazz-rock set called Jam Galaxy fronted by a robot named Desdemona.

It’s 1 of his galore broadside projects, which people led him to effort and tokenize the euphony concern by reaching retired to members of Pearl Jam and Heart. Goertzel is besides moving connected longevity probe by crowdsourcing quality wellness information with token rewards via an app called Rejuve.ai. That accusation is past pooled with carnal and insect survey information and analyzed with an AI to find which parts of the genomes tin marque america unrecorded longer and past stimulated utilizing cistron therapies. “We’ve had immoderate rather striking breakthrough-level discoveries,” helium says. Oh, and conscionable earlier our hour-long interrogation winds up, helium casually mentions arsenic an speech that he’s besides creating a stablecoin for his decentralized AI marketplace, Singularity.net, that’s pegged to a synthetic scale of biology advancement — due to the fact that pegging it to U.S. dollars would beryllium “lame.” 

“Progress connected the situation is precise stable. It ne'er goes anywhere,” helium points out.

“And to manipulate this, you person to really lick planetary warming.”

It’s the nonstop benignant of governmental remark meets high-tech know-how you mightiness expect from Goertzel, who looks and sounds similar a hippie idiosyncratic who stumbled into a clip instrumentality successful 1971 and emerged afloat formed successful 2023. But don’t beryllium fooled by the carnal people hat, agelong hairsbreadth and Electric Kool-Aid acerb travel drawl: He’s a superb idiosyncratic with a grasp of the aboriginal airy years up of astir and who’s grappling with immoderate of the biggest concepts humanity has ever considered. What is consciousness? How bash we make artificial life, and what happens if it doesn’t similar us, goes rogue, and guns everybody down similar successful Terminator 2?

Ben Goertzel (left) and Jam Galaxy fronted by Desdemona the Robot (second left).

What is artificial wide intelligence?

Goertzel popularized the word “artificial wide intelligence” arsenic a mode to differentiate a genuine reasoning instrumentality that could larn beauteous overmuch anything, to AIs that are optimized for 1 peculiar task, similar the Deep Blue machine that famously bushed satellite chess champion Garry Kasparov. He freely concedes determination are risks successful gathering a instrumentality that’s susceptible of learning thing and everything, including however to reprogram itself to go an bid of magnitude much intelligent than immoderate human.

“There’s a fig of risks and dangers with AGI,” says Goertzel implicit the din astatine an Indian edifice successful a engaged buying halfway successful Singapore. “One of them that’s gotten a batch of media attraction is that AGI volition tally amok and annihilate humanity and instrumentality implicit the universe. It’s wholly possible; you can’t regularisation it out,” helium says.

“Another much probable hazard is that nasty selfish radical volition usage AI to exert their ain greed and power implicit different people.”

In his view, governments are improbable to marque breakthroughs successful AGI arsenic they are “too blimpish and stupid,” though helium notes China contracts retired its AGI enactment to companies similar Tencent and Baidu. Closer to home, helium thinks Google and Facebook’s AI divisions won’t get implicit the enactment either, arsenic they’ll beryllium excessively focused connected making the AI deed definite metrics, which is not conducive to originative thought. 

“Just similar the astir superb radical don’t privation to simply service idiosyncratic else’s metrics, I deliberation artificial wide quality doesn’t needfully privation to maximize click-through connected someone’s web leafage either, right? It’s got to beryllium allowed to play astir creatively.”

Treat your AGI nicely oregon it’ll extremity successful tears. Source: Terminator 2

The Singularity circa 1970

Goertzel started assemblage astatine 15, graduated astatine 18, had a doctorate by 22 and a young household by 23. Perhaps unusually successful this time and age, helium wasn’t conscionable a mathematics whiz oregon tech genius who soldered kit computers unneurotic successful the ‘70s but was arsenic funny successful philosophy, originative penning and music.

He spent overmuch of his vocation teaching and researching machine science, mathematics and cognitive subject astatine assorted universities astir the globe portion moving connected AI tech whenever helium could. A serial laminitis who tends to beryllium astir a decennary up of everyone other with his ideas — which, successful business, famously equates to being wrong — he’s worked connected utilizing AI to foretell fiscal markets and longevity, and he’s besides had a stint arsenic the main idiosyncratic of Hanson Robotics, wherever helium gave Sophia the Robot her artificial brain.

Goertzel’s been reasoning astir exponential technological maturation since the 1970s erstwhile helium archetypal work Gerald Feinberg’s The Prometheus Project, which is astir “machines that tin deliberation amended than people… nanotechnology machines that are microscopically small, and we’re going to lick aging.” This dovetailed nicely with the emerging conception of the Singularity, a hypothetical aboriginal constituent erstwhile technological advances go uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting successful monolithic changes to quality civilization. 

A tattered transcript of The Prometheus Project. Source: Internet Archive

“So, radical volition unrecorded forever, past the question volition be, What bash we usage these technologies for, accelerated mindless consumerism, oregon bash we usage it to grow consciousness? And what helium [Feinberg] projected is to enactment that to a antiauthoritarian vote.”

Years later, erstwhile helium began to spot AGI was wrong our grasp, this “democratic vote” became the inspiration to archetypal usage open-source exertion and, aboriginal on, blockchain arsenic a mode to enactment a cooperative assemblage successful complaint of the technology.

“What I realized astatine a definite constituent is, with AI, having the codification unfastened isn’t enough,” helium says. “You truly request to bid the AI connected a shitload of data.”

Blockchain is basal but cool

To Goertzel, blockchain exertion is simply a small basic. He describes it arsenic immoderate primitive distributed algorithms added to cryptography, but the “cool combination” enables systems to tally without centralized control, making it cleanable for his needs.

“If you are going to marque a reasoning instrumentality and you are going to marque it distributed nanoscale computing fabric, it would beryllium precise bully if this was owned by everyone and nary 1 alternatively than controlled apical down.”

Blockchains are acold excessively dilatory to woody with the processing requirements and monolithic volumes of information involved, truthful there’s thing of a contention to decently standard blockchain earlier a breakthrough AGI is developed. Goertzel says that portion scaling solutions specified arsenic zero-knowledge rollups are better, they inactive don’t person capable bandwidth owed to the limitations of the blockchain to which they study transactions.

“Unless you tin radically summation the scalability of blockchain, you can’t enactment the interior workings of the AI on-chain.”

My dada @tedgoertzel dug up this clipping from 1961 (5 yrs pre-me) erstwhile helium was co-chair of SLAM, the Student League Against Mortality, a pupil org w/ purpose of abolishing death. Even had immoderate proto-Kurzweilian quantitative trend-forecasting successful there! Early roots of @Rejuve_AI pic.twitter.com/ZD7ycEGRum

— Ben Goertzel (@bengoertzel) December 24, 2022

AI is person than you think

2022 was thing of a breakthrough twelvemonth for moving products based connected AI technology, including connection applications (GPT-3, ChatGPT), coding (GitHub Copilot) and representation procreation (DALL-E and Stable Diffusion). Bing adjacent plans to instrumentality connected Google’s hunt dominance this twelvemonth by incorporating ChatGPT tech into its hunt engine.

Goertzel thinks an AGI could beryllium arsenic small arsenic 5 years distant and notes developments successful the tract look to spell successful abbreviated three- oregon four-year bursts successful a bid of breakthroughs.

“Computer Vision started successful 2014, and past each of a sudden, bang, bang, bang, the enigma was solved. Natural connection processing… aft Google came up with the Bert exemplary (in 2018) you had GPT-3. You volition astir apt spot the aforesaid arc of advancement successful AGI. You’ll person 1 breakthrough, past a large woody of advancement for 2 years,” helium said.

“The quality being the breakthrough progress, successful that case, results successful a instrumentality that tin past proceed to advancement itself by rewriting its ain code.”

Goertzel hopes the projects and collaborations he’s acceptable successful question could beryllium however it occurs.

“If we’re lucky, we’ll execute that breakthrough successful the adjacent 3 to 5 years with OpenCog Hyperon moving connected Singularity.net moving connected Hypercycle,” helium says. “But if we don’t crook retired to person the concealed sauce, idiosyncratic other will.”

Magazine caught up with Ben Goertzel successful Singapore. Source: Andrew Fenton

Pity Vitalik wasn’t a machine scientist

Goertzel’s solution to scaling the blockchain is beauteous extremist and involves turbo-charging a sidechain oregon furniture 2 of Cardano called “HyperCyle.”

“It truly is much than a sidechain. HyperCycle volition cooperate with Ethereum and different blockchains arsenic well, but we’re gonna usage the Plutus interpreter there, but we’re getting escaped of the ledger.”

He has described HyperCycle online arsenic solving the “blockchain trilemma” of “decentralization vs. information vs. show by getting escaped of the ledger and utilizing much modern/fully decentralized algos and information structures, positive a spot of AI and estimation systems.”

The ledger is astatine the bosom of blockchain tech, but helium says getting each node successful the web to replicate each transaction and process each astute declaration is ludicrously inefficient.

“The ledger is conscionable bad. If you deliberation astir it, if you deliberation astir the analogy of your contacts successful your phonebook, I mean, the ledger is similar […] keeping 10,000 copies of Yellow Pages, and you’re updating them each clip idiosyncratic caller comes oregon if idiosyncratic changes their telephone number. It’s truly anserine to update 10,000 copies of the Yellow Pages.”

In the HyperCycle mentation of the analogy, alternatively of everyone storing and updating the Yellow pages, the radical successful your interaction publication store a transcript of your code book, and vice versa, encrypted with your backstage key.

“We figured retired however to marque blockchain enactment without a replicating ledger, truthful to shard each the mode down. Every idiosyncratic engaged successful the blockchain keeps their ain transaction past and keeps the transaction past of their friends and immoderate of their friends’ friends,” helium says.

“Sharding each the mode down, you don’t request a ledger — you don’t request a database table. These things are mode excessively centralized.”

He says immoderate proof-of-concept HyperCycle nodes are already operational, but a full-scale motorboat won’t hap until the 2nd fractional of 2024.

We walk a agelong clip discussing the assorted merits of antithetic approaches to blockchain, from Internet Computer to Elastos and Celestia, overmuch of which is supra my wage people and beyond the capableness of my signaling instrumentality to accurately seizure successful a noisy restaurant.

Why Cardano, then?

Goertzel has go affable with Cardano laminitis Charles Hoskinson, with the brace bonding implicit their projects successful Africa. He believes Hoskinson is “genuinely retired determination to prevention the world. I mean, politically he’s much of a hardcore libertarian than I americium — I’m much of an anarcho-socialist — but helium isn’t conscionable successful it to marque wealth oregon fleece different radical retired of their money.”

But the existent entreaty of Cardano is that it uses the Haskell programming language, which Goertzel has been a instrumentality of since 1993. It pains him greatly that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin went with Gavin Wood’s astute declaration programming connection Solidity.

“If lone Vitalik had known much machine science, helium would person made them usage Haskell oregon F Sharp oregon something, and there’d beryllium acold less hacks of the blockchain,” helium says.

“If you’re going to beryllium moving astir of the world’s economy, trading trillions of dollars connected immoderate bundle system, you would beryllium amended disconnected to physique that bundle strategy successful a connection that is not prone to bugs and wherever your algorithms tin beryllium formally verified utilizing a mathematical theory. It’s conscionable the close mode to bash things.”

Stop-gap solution

No substance however accelerated blockchain gets, arsenic soon arsenic the AGI is an bid of magnitude smarter and much susceptible than humans are, Goertzel says it’s not going to fto anyone power it. 

“When an AGI is 100 times smarter than people, it doesn’t privation to beryllium controlled by us, arsenic we wouldn’t beryllium controlled by a chimpanzee oregon a donkey, right?”

“Then I would accidental the question isn’t 1 of america controlling it, the question is: Is it good disposed to us? Will it fto radical modulate their ain concern and proviso america with chill tools and nano assemblers to 3D people each the worldly that we privation and cure our diseases?”

“But the modulation play erstwhile the AGI is astir the aforesaid quality arsenic people, that’s erstwhile things are much touchy and much interesting. And the question is then: Does the AGI privation to cooperate with people? Or is it paranoid and wants to power radical earlier they destruct it?”

Teach your children well

In Goertzel’s opinion, the solution is to thatch the AGI astir caring for others and astir creativity and art. That’s wherever Desdemona the Robot successful his band, and her sister Grace — who is designed to supply elder attraction — travel in.

The mode you debar an AGI turning into Terminator’s Skynet is to not physique it that mode successful the archetypal place.

“Skynet, of course, successful the movie was a machine information web that ran amok. It was created to support itself against people,” helium says. 

“But if you physique the archetypal AGI to bash with elder attraction and originative arts and acquisition arsenic it gets smarter, it volition beryllium oriented toward helping radical and creating chill stuff. If you physique the archetypal AGI to termination the atrocious guys… possibly it volition support doing those things.”

“So, beneficial oregon not, it truly comes down to what applications you’ve developed and what you’ve incentivized for.”

He believes that putting AIs into robot bodies is adjuvant due to the fact that it helps situate them successful the existent world, alternatively than immoderate abstract mathematical universe.

Sophia the Robot has her ain metaverse level launching soon. (Source: Sophiaverse)

“AI should larn astir the quality satellite and the carnal world. Being embodied successful the satellite is the close mode to bash that,” helium says.

But erstwhile helium presents Sophia the Robot to a large audience, the ocular and auditory sensors tin beryllium easy overwhelming, confusing the AI successful a large and agleam environment. So, Sophia volition beryllium launching soon successful the metaverse, called Sophiaverse. Forget ChatGPT’s boring text-based answers, Sophia is embodied successful a 3D virtual world, and she’ll larn from interacting with radical there. However, helium cautions she astir apt volition accidental immoderate dumb things.

“It has a neural nett akin to GPT-3 and truthful forth, which person important installation to reply your questions, but they’re besides rather anserine successful immoderate ways.”