Hugo
De Garis: God-Makers Were... And Will Be... Our
Malevolent Deities
The rise of artilects (artificial
intellects,
i.e., godlike massively intelligent machines with
intellectual capacities trillions of trillions of
times above the human level) in this century makes the
existence of a deity (a massively intelligent entity
capable of creating a universe) seem much more
plausible. There are now thousands of AI scientists
around the world (concentrated largely in the
English-speaking countries) who feel that humanity
will be able to build massively intelligent machines
this century that will be hugely smarter than human
beings. The author, for example, thinks that the issue
of whether humanity should build these “artilects”
(artificial intellects) will dominate our global
politics this century and lead to a “gigadeath”
war, killing billions of people. These AI researchers
know that 21st century technology will be
capable of creating machines with a bit processing
rate trillions of trillions of times above the
estimated human-brain-equivalent bit-processing rate,
and that neuro-scientific knowledge is advancing at an
exponential rate.