Machine intelligences of the far future will … be able to reconstruct human society in every detail by tracing atomic events backward in time … By this logic, our current “reality” could be nothing more than a simulation produced by information entities … “The robots will re-create us any number of times, whereas the original version of our world exists, at most, only once. Therefore, statistically speaking, it’s much more likely we’re living in a vast simulation than in the original version. To me, the whole concept of reality is rather absurd. But while you’re inside the scenario, you can’t help but play by the rules. So we might as well pretend this is real – even though the chance things are as they seem is essentially negligible.”
Predictor: Moravec, Hans
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Charles Platt, author of “The Silicon Man,” interviews Hans Moravec, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and the author of “Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence.” Moravec predicts that thanks to networking technology by the year 2040 “there will be no job people can do better than robots,” and adds that machine intelligence will miniaturize itself to subatomic level, gently eliminating humans but remembering us kindly as its creator. Platt writes: ”Machine intelligences of the far future will develop from our initial programming, just as a child grows from its parents’ DNA. Consequently, even when robots are smarter than we are, they should retain many of our priorities and values. But Moravec takes the scenario even one step further. Assuming the artificial intelligences now have truly overwhelming processing power, they should be able to reconstruct human society in every detail by tracing atomic events backward in time. ‘It will cost them very little to preserve us this way,’ he points out. ‘They will, in fact, be able to re-create a model of our entire civilization, with everything and everyone in it, down to the atomic level, simulating our atoms with machinery that’s vastly subatomic. Also,’ he says with amusement, ‘they’ll be able to use data compression to remove the redundant stuff that isn’t important.’ But by this logic, our current ‘reality’ could be nothing more than a simulation produced by information entities. ‘Of course.’ Moravec shrugs and waves his hand as if the idea is too obvious. ‘In fact, the robots will re-create us any number of times, whereas the original version of our world exists, at most, only once. Therefore, statistically speaking, it’s much more likely we’re living in a vast simulation than in the original version. To me, the whole concept of reality is rather absurd. But while you’re inside the scenario, you can’t help but play by the rules. So we might as well pretend this is real – even though the chance things are as they seem is essentially negligible.’ And so, according to Hans Moravec, the human race is almost certainly extinct, while the world around us is just an advanced version of SimCity.”
Biography:Hans Moravec was a professor at Carnegie Mellon university’s Robotics Institute who caused a lot of consternation with the book “Mind Children: The Future of the Robot and Human Intelligence,” in which he predicted the rise of machines and extinction of humans. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Human-Machine Interaction
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Superhumanism: According to Hans Moravec, by 2040 Robots Will Become as Smart as We Are. And Then They’ll Displace Us as the Dominant Form of Life on Earth. But He Isn’t Worried – the Robots Will Love Us
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/moravec_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney