by Ray Kurzweil
Civil Liberties in an Age of Asymmetric Warfare. The nature of terrorist attacks and the philosophies of the organizations behind them highlight how civil liberties can be at odds with legitimate state interests in surveillance and control. Our law-enforcement system—and indeed, much of our thinking about security—is based on the assumption that people are motivated to preserve their own lives and well-being. That logic underlies all our strategies, from protection at the local level to mutual assured destruction on the world stage. But a foe that values the destruction of both its enemy and itself is not amenable to this line of reasoning.
The implications of dealing with an enemy that does not value its own survival are deeply troublesome and have led to controversy that will only intensify as the stakes continue to escalate. For example, when the FBI identifies a likely terrorist cell, it will arrest the participants, even though there may be insufficient evidence to convict them of a crime and they may not yet even have committed a crime. Under the rules of engagement in our war on terrorism, the government continues to hold these individuals.
In a lead editorial, the New York Times objected to this policy, which it described as a “troubling provision.”47 The paper argued that the government should release these detainees because they have not yet committed a crime and should rearrest them only after they have done so. Of course by that time suspected terrorists might well be dead along with a large number of their victims. How can the authorities possibly break up a vast network of decentralized cells of suicide terrorists if they have to wait for each one to commit a crime?
On the other hand this very logic has been routinely used by tyrannical regimes to justify the waiving of the judicial protections we have come to cherish. It is likewise fair to argue that curtailing civil liberties in this way is exactly the aim of the terrorists, who despise our notions of freedoms and pluralism. However, I do not see the prospect of any technology “magic bullet” that would essentially change this dilemma.
The encryption trapdoor may be considered a technical innovation that the government has been proposing in an attempt to balance legitimate individual needs for privacy with the government’s need for surveillance. Along with this type of technology we also need the requisite political innovation to provide for effective oversight, by both the judicial and legislative branches, of the executive branch’s use of these trapdoors, to avoid the potential for abuse of power. The secretive nature of our opponents and their lack of respect for human life including their own will deeply test the foundations of our democratic traditions.
A Program for GNR Defense
We come from goldfish, essentially, but that [doesn’t] mean we turned around and killed all the goldfish. Maybe [the AIs] will feed us once a week. . . . If you had a machine with a 10 to the 18th power IQ over humans, wouldn’t you want it to govern, or at least control your economy?
—SETH SHOSTAK
How can we secure the profound benefits of GNR while ameliorating its perils? Here’s a review of a suggested program for containing the GNR risks:
The most urgent recommendation is to greatly increase our investment in defensive technologies. Since we are already in the G era, the bulk of this investment today should be in (biological) antiviral medications and treatments. We have new tools that are well suited to this task. RNA interference, for example, can be used to block gene expression. Virtually all infections (as well as cancer) rely on gene expression at some point during their life cycles.
Efforts to anticipate the defensive technologies needed to safely guide N and R should also be supported, and these should be substantially increased as we get closer to the feasibility of molecular manufacturing and strong AI, respectively. A significant side benefit would be to accelerate effective treatments for infectious disease and cancer. I’ve testified before Congress on this issue, advocating the investment of tens of billions of dollars per year (less than 1 percent of the GDP) to address this new and underrecognized existential threat to humanity.48
We need to streamline the regulatory process for genetic and medical technologies. The regulations do not impede the malevolent use of technology but significantly delay the needed defenses. As mentioned, we need to better balance the risks of new technology (for example, new medications) against the known harm of delay.
A global program of confidential, random serum monitoring for unknown or evolving biological pathogens should be funded. Diagnostic tools exist to rapidly identify the existence of unknown protein or nucleic acid sequences. Intelligence is key to defense, and such a program could provide invaluable early warning of an impending epidemic. Such a “pathogen sentinel” program has been proposed for many years by public health authorities but has never received adequate funding.
Well-defined and targeted temporary moratoriums, such as the one that occurred in the genetics field in 1975, may be needed from time to time. But such moratoriums are unlikely to be necessary with nanotechnology. Broad efforts at relinquishing major areas of technology serve only to continue vast human suffering by delaying the beneficial aspects of new technologies, and actually make the dangers worse.
Efforts to define safety and ethical guidelines for nanotechnology should continue. Such guidelines will inevitably become more detailed and refined as we get closer to molecular manufacturing.
To create the political support to fund the efforts suggested above, it is necessary to raise public awareness of these dangers. Because, of course, there exists the downside of raising alarm and generating uninformed backing for broad antitechnology mandates, we also need to create a public understanding of the profound benefits of continuing advances in technology.
These risks cut across international boundaries—which is, of course, nothing new; biological viruses, software viruses, and missiles already cross such boundaries with impunity. International cooperation was vital to containing the SARS virus and will become increasingly vital in confronting future challenges. Worldwide organizations such as the World Health Organization, which helped coordinate the SARS response, need to be strengthened.
A contentious contemporary political issue is the need for preemptive action to combat threats, such as terrorists with access to weapons of mass destruction or rogue nations that support such terrorists. Such measures will always be controversial, but the potential need for them is clear. A nuclear explosion can destroy a city in seconds. A self-replicating pathogen, whether biological or nanotechnology based, could destroy our civilization in a matter of days or weeks. We cannot always afford to wait for the massing of armies or other overt indications of ill intent before taking protective action.
Intelligence agencies and policing authorities will have a vital role in forestalling the vast majority of potentially dangerous incidents. Their efforts need to involve the most powerful technologies available. For example, before this decade is over, devices the size of dust particles will be able to carry out reconnaissance missions. When we reach the 2020s and have software running in our bodies and brains, government authorities will have a legitimate need on occasion to monitor these software streams. The potential for abuse of such powers is obvious. We will need to achieve a middle road of preventing catastrophic events while preserving our privacy and liberty.
The above approaches will be inadequate to deal with the danger from pathological R (strong AI). Our primary strategy in this area should be to optimize the likelihood that future nonbiological intelligence will reflect our values of liberty, tolerance, and respect for knowledge and diversity. The best way to accomplish this is to foster those values in our society today and going forward. If this sounds vague, it is. But there is no purely technical strategy that is workable in this area, because greater intelligence will always find a way to circumvent measures that are the product of a lesser intelligence. The nonbiological intelligence we are creating is and will be embedded in our societies and will reflect our values. The trans-biological phase will involve nonbiological intelligence deeply inte
grated with biological intelligence. This will amplify our abilities, and our application of these greater intellectual powers will be governed by the values of its creators. The transbiological era will ultimately give way to the post-biological era, but it is to be hoped that our values will remain influential. This strategy is certainly not foolproof, but it is the primary means we have today to influence the future course of strong AI.
Technology will remain a double-edged sword. It represents vast power to be used for all humankind’s purposes. GNR will provide the means to overcome age-old problems such as illness and poverty, but it will also empower destructive ideologies. We have no choice but to strengthen our defenses while we apply these quickening technologies to advance our human values, despite an apparent lack of consensus on what those values should be.
MOLLY 2004: Okay, now run that stealthy scenario by me again—you know, the one where the bad nanobots spread quietly through the biomass to get themselves into position but don’t actually expand to noticeably destroy anything until they’re spread around the globe.
RAY: Well, the nanobots would spread at very low concentrations, say one carbon atom per 1015 in the biomass, so they would be seeded throughout the biomass. Thus, the speed of physical spread of the destructive nanobots would not be a limiting factor when they subsequently replicate in place. If they skipped the stealth phase and expanded instead from a single point, the spreading nanodisease would be noticed, and the spread around the world would be relatively slow.
MOLLY 2004: So how are we going to protect ourselves from that? By the time they start phase two, we’ve got only about ninety minutes, or much less if you want to avoid enormous damage.
RAY: Because of the nature of exponential growth, the bulk of the damage gets done in the last few minutes, but your point is well taken. Under any scenario, we won’t have a chance without a nanotechnology immune system. Obviously, we can’t wait until the beginning of a ninety-minute cycle of destruction to begin thinking about creating one. Such a system would be very comparable to our human immune system. How long would a biological human circa 2004 last without one?
MOLLY 2004: Not long, I suppose. How does this nano-immune system pick up these bad nanobots if they’re only one in a thousand trillion?
RAY: We have the same issue with our biological immune system. Detection of even a single foreign protein triggers rapid action by biological antibody factories, so the immune system is there in force by the time a pathogen achieves a near critical level. We’ll need a similar capability for the nano-immune system.
CHARLES DARWIN: Now tell me, do the immune-system nanobots have the ability to replicate?
RAY: They would need to be able to do this; otherwise they would not be able to keep pace with the replicating pathogenic nanobots. There have been proposals to seed the biomass with protective immune-system nanobots at a particular concentration, but as soon as the bad nanobots significantly exceeded this fixed concentration the immune system would lose. Robert Freitas proposes nonreplicating nanofactories able to turn out additional protective nanorobots when needed. I think this is likely to deal with threats for a while, but ultimately the defensive system will need the ability to replicate its immune capabilities in place to keep pace with emerging threats.
CHARLES: So aren’t the immune-system nanobots entirely equivalent to the phase one malevolent nanobots? I mean seeding the biomass is the first phase of the stealth scenario.
RAY: But the immune-system nanobots are programmed to protect us, not destroy us.
CHARLES: I understand that software can be modified.
RAY: Hacked, you mean?
CHARLES: Yes, exactly. So if the immune-system software is modified by a hacker to simply turn on its self-replication ability without end—
RAY: —yes, well, we’ll have to be careful about that, won’t we?
MOLLY 2004: I’ll say.
RAY: We have the same problem with our biological immune system. Our immune system is comparably powerful, and if it turns on us that’s an autoimmune disease, which can be insidious. But there’s still no alternative to having an immune system.
MOLLY 2004: So a software virus could turn the nanobot immune system into a stealth destroyer?
RAY: That’s possible. It’s fair to conclude that software security is going to be the decisive issue for many levels of the human-machine civilization. With everything becoming information, maintaining the software integrity of our defensive technologies will be critical to our survival. Even on an economic level, maintaining the business model that creates information will be critical to our well-being.
MOLLY 2004: This makes me feel rather helpless. I mean, with all these good and bad nanobots battling it out, I’ll just be a hapless bystander.
RAY: That’s hardly a new phenomenon. How much influence do you have in 2004 on the disposition of the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in the world?
MOLLY 2004: At least I have a voice and a vote in elections that affect foreign-policy issues.
RAY: There’s no reason for that to change. Providing for a reliable nanotechnology immune system will be one of the great political issues of the 2020s and 2030s.
MOLLY 2004: Then what about strong AI?
RAY: The good news is that it will protect us from malevolent nanotechnology because it will be smart enough to assist us in keeping our defensive technologies ahead of the destructive ones.
NED LUDD: Assuming it’s on our side.
RAY: Indeed.
CHAPTER NINE
* * *
Response to Critics
The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy.
—W. I. BEVERIDGE
If a . . . scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.
—ARTHUR C. CLARKE
A Panoply of Criticisms
In The Age of Spiritual Machines, I began to examine some of the accelerating trends that I have sought to explore in greater depth in this book. ASM inspired a broad variety of reactions, including extensive discussions of the profound, imminent changes it considered (for example, the promise-versus-peril debate prompted by Bill Joy’s Wired story, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” as I reviewed in the previous chapter). The response also included attempts to argue on many levels why such transformative changes would not, could not, or should not happen. Here is a summary of the critiques I will be responding to in this chapter:
The “criticism from Malthus”: It’s a mistake to extrapolate exponential trends indefinitely, since they inevitably run out of resources to maintain the exponential growth. Moreover, we won’t have enough energy to power the extraordinarily dense computational platforms forecast, and even if we did they would be as hot as the sun. Exponential trends do reach an asymptote, but the matter and energy resources needed for computation and communication are so small per compute and per bit that these trends can continue to the point where nonbiological intelligence is trillions of trillions of times more powerful than biological intelligence. Reversible computing can reduce energy requirements, as well as heat dissipation, by many orders of magnitude. Even restricting computation to “cold” computers will achieve nonbiological computing platforms that vastly outperform biological intelligence.
The “criticism from software”: We’re making exponential gains in hardware, but software is stuck in the mud. Although the doubling time for progress in software is longer than that for computational hardware, software is also accelerating in effectiveness, efficiency, and complexity. Many software applications, ranging from search engines to games, routinely use AI techniques that were only research projects a decade ago. Substantial gains have also been made in the overall complexity of software, in software productivity, and in the efficiency of software in solving key algorithmic problems. Moreover, we have an effective game plan to achieve the capabilitie
s of human intelligence in a machine: reverse engineering the brain to capture its principles of operation and then implementing those principles in brain-capable computing platforms. Every aspect of brain reverse engineering is accelerating: the spatial and temporal resolution of brain scanning, knowledge about every level of the brain’s operation, and efforts to realistically model and simulate neurons and brain regions.
The “criticism from analog processing”: Digital computation is too rigid because digital bits are either on or off. Biological intelligence is mostly analog, so subtle gradations can be considered. It’s true that the human brain uses digital-controlled analog methods, but we can also use such methods in our machines. Moreover, digital computation can simulate analog transactions to any desired level of accuracy, whereas the converse statement is not true.
The “criticism from the complexity of neural processing”: The information processes in the interneuronal connections (axons, dendrites, synapses) are far more complex than the simplistic models used in neural nets. True, but brain-region simulations don’t use such simplified models. We have achieved realistic mathematical models and computer simulations of neurons and interneuronal connections that do capture the nonlinearities and intricacies of their biological counterparts. Moreover, we have found that the complexity of processing brain regions is often simpler than the neurons they comprise. We already have effective models and simulations for several dozen regions of the human brain. The genome contains only about thirty to one hundred million bytes of design information when redundancy is considered, so the design information for the brain is of a manageable level.
The “criticism from microtubules and quantum computing”: The micro-tubules in neurons are capable of quantum computing, and such quantum computing is a prerequisite for consciousness. To “upload” a personality, one would have to capture its precise quantum state. No evidence exists to support either of these statements. Even if true, there is nothing that bars quantum computing from being carried out in nonbiological systems. We routinely use quantum effects in semiconductors (tunneling in transistors, for example), and machine-based quantum computing is also progressing. As for capturing a precise quantum state, I’m in a very different quantum state than I was before writing this sentence. So am I already a different person? Perhaps I am, but if one captured my state a minute ago, an upload based on that information would still successfully pass a “Ray Kurzweil” Turing test.