SIAI Interview Series: Aubrey de Grey, Methuselah Foundation
June 18th, 2007 –
Dr. Aubrey de Grey is an SIAI Advisor and chairman and chief science officer of the SENS Foundation, a nonprofit focused on accelerating the development of evidence-based rejuvenation therapies to combat aging. In this interview, Aubrey discusses his role with SIAI, the relationship between his work and SIAI’s, the potential negative side of the singularity, the reasoning behind Friendly AI research, and more.
Just a quick technical note: For those who’d like to download this as a video file or watch it in a non-swf format, the google video page is here.
Maybe it would be possible to offer an audio version of this interview? (For example a downloadable MP3.)
I really enjoy hearing Aubrey speak – he’s the kind of speaker that really conveys his deep understanding of his subject matter. I think his ideas about the biological advances are every bit (if not more so) as important as the AI advances. We as humans still don’t have a complete understanding of how the human body works, much less the brain, so I think that investing heavily understanding in our biological systems will be the key factor in determining how well we fare with those first self replicating systems.
Great interview!
Oh – and by the way – are any of these comments going to be a two way street? It seems that there isn’t a way to thread these comments so that we can carry on a two way conversation effectively. Also – are any of the bloggers going to be interacting directly with us or responding to our comments? It seems like there are so few people involved in reading and commenting at this point that it’d be fantastic to be able to have the conversation be more dynamic.
[...] is een video van Aubrey de Grey online bij het Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. [?] Share [...]
Fine interview and ideas. Implementation will be tough, however, due to the nature of current Western medical society, for it’s not profitable to maintain or enhance longevity.
Practicing medicine, as I have for several decades, has been mostly fun (nothing like getting paid for making people happier), but increasingly frustrating as you get to understand the above statement.
Running a busy Medical outpatient clinical operation and barely using inpatient facilities makes you unpopular very quickly with Hospital establishments.
Since you’re a Biologist, here’s an example… Most type 2 Diabetics on exogenous insulin who are morbidly obese not only don’t require it (they’re still ‘resistant’) but it’ s contraindicated, to boot….IT JUST MAKES THEM HUNGRIER… If this fact alone was integrated into and understood by our practicing medical establishment, hospitals would really be in trouble.
Entering this mostly POLITICAL arena is probably dangerous, but it’s nice to be able to share this.
Sincerely,
Tony Cohen, M.D.
“Implementation will be tough, however, due to the nature of current Western medical society, for itâs not profitable to maintain or enhance longevity.”
You mean people won’t pay huge quantities of money for anything that will make them look, feel, and act younger? Well, they kind of are already- anti-aging is already a multi-billion dollar industry.
Tom, people will pay large quanties of money (as we see with how medical bills can get high) but I think what he means is it’s not actually profitable to GIVE it to them.
Essentially, it’s much better to have people sick because it means continued business. This is only balanced out by how informed consumers (patients) are about their purchases, and the ethics and caring of the doctors within the industry, and of the people funding the doctors.
Even if most doctors are ethical, if the ones who aren’t receive more funding (from selfish investors) then they will dominate the field. They can even dictate how future doctors are educated, as to make even moral doctors uphold fallacies.
Even without support from selfish investors, when you consider corporate interests, good people may still be forced to act selfishly so that their actions are in the interests of shareholders. Basically, we need some sort of legislation alteration to control how wealth is ethically spent, but that leads you down the road of oppression, so it really does seem to come to the point of expecting charitable acts
Hardly what I’d like to rely on).
Unfortunately, due to this bias, people have a bad perception of the medical field which has made them fall prey to all sorts of scams and hucksters in ‘alternative’ medicine due to their dissattisfaction. They trust in human nature and fail to see that such so-called ‘medicine’ (it isn’t, better called poison or placebo) is far less regulated and far more vulnerable to manipulation by shucksters.
In Tony’s response to you, that anti-aging is for the well-informed and/or wealthy, while true, this is true of all emerging technologies, and the separation will lessen both as the memes spread, and the technology becomes more affordable. Both are unavoidable with our support.
Soren wrote:
“Oh – and by the way – are any of these comments going to be a two way street? It seems that there isnât a way to thread these comments so that we can carry on a two way conversation effectively.”
Thanks for this suggestion, Soren. Our webmaster has found a plugin to make this possible, and will be working to adapt it to our customized blog theme.
“Also – are any of the bloggers going to be interacting directly with us or responding to our comments? It seems like there are so few people involved in reading and commenting at this point that itâd be fantastic to be able to have the conversation be more dynamic.”
We want to get a lot of people engaged through the blog. We only announced one month ago, though, so it’s going to take a while to build up a community of solid contributors. Hang in there. Help us spread the word.
To Soren and everyone: I welcome any feedback you have so far about the SIAI Blog.
Antiaging is a multibillion dollar industry only for the well informed and/or the wealthy. ~ 5%~
The rest haven’t a clue.
On LongevityMeme the author expressed a lack of confidence in AI developement being as utilitarian as life extension, but I have to heartily disagree.
While I do thing LE is better, it really is an opinionated thing. Many transhumanist believe more in the survival of memes than individuals, and in passing ideas down and pursuing the Singularity concept. This is especially clear on a site like this. Pursuing technology and education and studying learning processes is much more valuable than individual longevity using this approach. I just want to live as a person a lot more (despite realizing how much higher an overall ideal Singularity is) so due to that selfishness, I pursue personal longevity.
Even from that pursuit though, one can’t exactly just throw out the relevance of AI research. It plays a huge part, and really, what you think is more valuable comes down to what you have more faith in the intelligence and ingenuity of: humans or computers. I seem to think humans as of this moment, but that could easily change. Already, computers are a very vital component to biochemical research, bioinformatics has revolutionized genome searching and has accelerated research linking it to specific conditions.
Who knows, perhaps it won’t be us, or us working with a computer, but an AI working with a database, who discovers important key processes with greatly lengthening human life.
In that case, everyone wins, because I personally think endeavours like that are a much better evaluation of AI’s complexity than silly things like the Turing test, which is being passed now by Porn chatbots showing that really, it just defines humanity by its lowest common denominator, and you don’t really know until the AI passes it with EVERYONE. Sometimes I wonder if humans will pass it either, because can’t the highest minds among us perceive the inner machine of instinct and genetic tendency dictating the actions of the simpler human minds just as biologists do with animals?
A test of problem solving over Turing is also far more fair and less subjective, much like beating us at a chess game, it’s a real black and white test: do better than us, then you’re our equal in this regard. The problem is, people don’t know on how many regards machines have to be better. Maybe what it really comes down to the mirror test, only passed by chimps, asian elephants and dolphins so far.
Now to watch the movie
I love this beard, too bad I shaved mine recently.
SIAI Interview Series: Aubrey de Grey, Methuselah Foundation
Dr. Aubrey de Grey is an SIAI Advisor and chairman and chief science officer of the Methuselah Foundation, a nonprofit focused on accelerating the development of evidence-based rejuvenation therapies to combat aging. In this interview, Aubrey discusses…