Lifeboat Foundation: How Stephen Wolfram Prepares for Singularity

The legend of mathematics and computing — Stephen Wolfram — is seriously concerned about problems far more serious than climate change or overpopulation. He recently joined the Lifeboat Foundation , a brain center dedicated to finding ways to protect humanity from lethal nano-weapons and insane artificial intelligence.

The concept of singularity asserts that in the very near future, technology will fundamentally change human nature. In books like The Singularity is Near and The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil argues that man and machine will eventually become one. Despite the fact that many experts chuckle at the very idea of ​​singularity, the concept has the most active influence on both science and pop culture.

Wolfram has his own ideas about the future of humanity and technology. In his last lecture at the Singularity Summit , he talked about the fact that the universe is best viewed as a computer program, and that technological capabilities in the near future will begin to change our nature in the most unimaginable ways.
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Lifeboat’s interest in exploring even unlikely global risks has resulted in several unique projects. In general, their range varies from ideas that would seem trivial even to government agencies, to truly unique solutions to problems that are difficult even to imagine.

One of these programs is nanoshield . It focuses on the protection of humanity from self-replicating nano-weapons. Futurologists believe that the military in the future can put into practice the so-called. "Ecofagi" (judging by all, by analogy with macrophages - approx. Transl.) - tiny devices, the only task of which is replication and destruction of the enemy and enemy resources.

Specialists from the Lifeboat Foundation are studying various materials that could serve as the basis for the creation of such devices. In addition, they explore a number of related issues - from the discovery of ecophages to the integrated fight against nano-weapons. Radiation and acoustic protection are now considered the most promising.

Other experts at Lifeboat focus on one of the most popular stories in Hollywood - protecting humanity from an asteroid threat. The asteroidshield program is working on preventive methods that could one day save our planet. The battered decision - the destruction of an asteroid (as in the film Armageddon ) - in reality is impossible. The destruction of an asteroid by rockets or other explosions can turn into a real disaster due to debris. Instead, scientists propose to use extensive methods of detection, along with technologies to change the orbit of asteroids. To test the hypothesis Lifeboat consider it necessary for one of the space or military agencies to attempt a controlled change of the asteroid's orbit by 2015.

But perhaps the most interesting project of Lifeboat is protecting us from strength, which we still do not fully understand. AIshield is a program that develops a solution to protect humanity from unfriendly-tuned artificial intelligence. According to Lifeboat, full-fledged artificial intelligence with capabilities beyond human capabilities will appear in the coming decades. Scientists believe that some of these creatures can be dangerous and lead to tangible negative consequences for the world. The result of the research is one of the most popular topics in popular science literature:

Artificial intelligence can be embedded in robots that will be used as soldiers. Such killer robots can be created extremely ruthless, and built for this purpose can turn against those who created them. Like the most dangerous weapons of mass destruction, be it nuclear bombs or biological weapons, robot soldiers can eventually destroy their creators. The solution to this problem is an extremely complex process and has not yet been found.

In the event of one of the above problems, Lifeboat also considers the creation of small space colonies (in the picture at the beginning), called Ark 1 , which they describe as certain autonomous communities. Contrary to the ideas of the colonization of other planets, why not use the space around the Earth? This would allow groups of people to live together during the process of destruction of the planet.

Other Lifeboat projects are dedicated to more everyday threats. One of them is currently exploring ways to protect the Internet from global attacks , other experts are focused on creating fantastical global defense systems against terrorist threats that can search and neutralize terrorists before they have done their crime.

Despite the fact that the Lifeboat budget is an order of magnitude smaller than that of traditional research centers, they have quite decent funding. To date, they have already received more than 500 thousand dollars. But the most important thing for the scientific community is that Lifeboat is one of the points where the best minds can focus their attention on projects that may be relevant even after 200 years.