The Artilect War: Cosmists vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines [Hardcover]

Hugo de Garis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0882801538 | ISBN-13: 978-0882801537

The Artilect War — Cosmists vs. Terrans is concerned with the possibility of a bitter controversy about whether humanity should build godlike massively intelligent machines

Editorial Reviews

Review

A book that cannot and should not be ignored. It is too important and too disturbing to be summarily dismissed. -- Kevin Warwick, Ph.D., Professor of Cybernetics, Reading University, England; Author of I Cyborg, In the Mind of the Machine, March of the Machines

If you read only one book this year, this is it! It is a book that forces you to think. -- Richard W. Hostrop, Ph.D., Author of Foundatons in Futurology in Education, Education...beyond tomorrow

From the Publisher

Dr. Hugo de Garis' web site has had more than 190,000 hits! His controversial work on building aritificial brains in Japan, Belgium and the U.S. has led to his testifying before the French Parliament and as a speaker in Davos to world leaders.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 254 pages
• Publisher: Etc Pubns (February 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882801538
• ISBN-13: 978-0882801537
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,450,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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17 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Farfetched, January 22, 2006

By 

Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Artilect War: Cosmists Vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines (Paperback)

If one examines the history of research into artificial intelligence (AI), one will see it to be one of periods of incredible optimism as well as periods of extreme pessimism. Funding for research into AI, both private and public, is partly responsible for this. But the researchers themselves bear a certain measure of responsibility for the wild swings that have marked the history of AI. It seems that as soon as something is invented that appears promising or "intelligent" it is shortly thereafter abandoned as being "trivial" or uninteresting. Researchers always seem willing to go along with this unfortunately, even though they have indeed made significant progress in certain areas. Once an algorithm or reasoning pattern is understood, its status as `intelligent' is taken away and it is thereafter viewed as `just another part of the programming toolbox'. There is strong evidence, coming mostly from the commercial realm, that truly intelligent machines exist and are saving and making companies hundreds of millions of dollars in their deployment in the field. This intelligence is however not noticed or recognized as such. It is viewed merely as software that is `running' on the machines, complex yes, but not really different than `ordinary' software that has been used for decades now. If this pattern continues, then no matter how intelligent machines get they will not be viewed as being so. Their human users will therefore not be intimidated by or even impressed by them. They will become accepted just like any other piece of technology, usually taken for granted, although at times becoming an annoyance due to their need for repair and adjustment (this need becoming more critical as their complexity increases).

When this book is read with this in mind its main thesis, namely that there will sometime in the relatively near future be a controversy over the building of `massively' intelligent machines, completely dissolves. The author believes that sometime in the second half of the twenty-first century, humanity will divide itself into two camps. One of these, called the `Cosmists', will advocate the building of what the author calls `artilects', which are "massively" intelligent machines. The other camp, called the `Terrans', is strongly opposed to the building of these types of machines. The tension between these two groups will become so extreme the author argues, that it will result in a full-scale war between them, resulting in the deaths of millions of people.

In the book the author details his reasons for believing that this will happen, and he even discusses his own anxieties on the possibility of massively intelligent machines. The author is a noted expert in machine intelligence, especially in the fields of evolutionary computing and evolvable hardware. Therefore when a researcher like the author makes the claims he does it motivates the reader to examine his arguments in more detail. It is apparent when reading the book that these arguments have been carefully thought out, even though at times, because of the Cosmist-Terran terminology, the reading sometimes appears sophomoric or science-fictional in quality.

The claims made in this book would have more credibility if progress in artificial intelligence could be modeled by large discrete jumps. Central to its claim is that there will arrive a time at which both `Cosmists' and `Terrans' agree that superintelligent machines can be realized or manufactured. The apprehension felt by the Terrans will motivate them to try and suppress this realization, this behavior putting them squarely against the Cosmists. This conflict will escalate into full-scale war, fought with highly advanced and destructive technology.

But progress in AI is basically a smooth function of time, and there has been progress, despite the extreme skepticism of many individuals (most of these, again, being AI researchers themselves). Like any other field, some of the ideas in AI have not been fruitful, and have fallen by the wayside. Advances in AI have been steady, and the advances, as well as its applications are rapidly accelerating. The use of intelligent machines has become routine, so routine in fact that it is not really noticed. One can expect this trend to continue, and researchers twenty years from now will no doubt think that real intelligence has not yet been achieved. The bar will then get raised again. All the while the machines are performing useful functions and will exist in complete symbiosis with the humans around them. However, there will still be anxiety about the future arrival of superintelligent machines. It may take a while, probably till the end of the twenty-first century, for this anxiety to alleviate. Historians of technology in the first year of the twenty-second century will no doubt look back at this one and be perplexed as to why AI progress was not really part of the consciousness of those who were involved in it. These same historians will also feel another emotion when they study the developments of twenty-first century technology, including artificial intelligence:

Astonishment

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fantasy For The Most Part....I Hope!, July 17, 2006

By 

Kevin Spoering (Buffalo, Missouri United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Artilect War: Cosmists Vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines (Paperback)

This book is largely a one man debate by A.I. researcher Hugo de Garis on whether we should build massively intelligent machines later in the 21st century. Hugo presents to us a new vocabulary: artilect means artificial intellect, cosmist means those people in favor of building artilects, and terrans are against building artilects. Garis, by his own admission, describes himself as a cosmist, with misgivings, as this future technology gives him pause to reflect on it's awesome power, and whether it will be safe to build them, as regards to human safety and survivability. Consider this: an advanced artilect could easily have a mind trillions of times more powerful than a human mind, thus they may consider us vermin fit to be exterminated! Garis presents many arguments from both the cosmist and terran viewpoints. He also writes that it will be almost impossible to prevent artilects from being built. Garis believes that the primary global political question of this century will be which species will be dominant, human or artilect?

Well, Garis is much too negative for me. For a more positive spin on all of this you could read THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR by Ray Kurzweil. In his book Kurzweil writes that advanced artificial intelligences could be designed to be friendly to humans (Garis disagrees) and probably will respect their creators. Between these two books I consider Kurzweil's book to be the far superior, with many references. Garis is too self-congratulatory for my taste, and I personally believe the whole cosmist-terran debate as presented by Garis to be a non-issue. Artilects will arrive among us in a gradual way as very useful devices, and eventually become conscious beings in and of themselves, and we will be glad to have them around. I do agree with Garis on one point, however, and that is that advanced A.I. and it's applications will come to dominate 21st century economics.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars food for thought but motives questionnable, February 12, 2007

By 

Chris Goumas (Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Artilect War: Cosmists Vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines (Paperback)

De Garis argues that the ability to build 'Godlike massively intelligent machines', which he believes will be achieved sometime this century, will produce a global schism between those of us pro (Cosmists) and those of us against (Terrans) the utilisation of such technology. The result will be global war between the opposing camps, with the use of the vastly advanced weaponry which will then be available leading to what he describes as 'gigadeath'. Whether such a prophesy is realistic or purely in the realms of science fiction is debatable - the problem I have is with the motives behind de Garis writing the book the first place. De Garis tries to portray himself as a Cosmist with a conscience - he is definitely in the 'pro' camp (he is a prominent figure in the field of Artificial Intelligence and currently working on building 'brain machines'), but confesses to being tormented by nightmares of what his work may result in. To appease his conscience, de Garis therefore has published this book as a warning against what his work may lead to. I find this attitude very difficult to swallow. Considering the potential consquences of his work - the end of humanity - if de Garis has even the slightest moral doubt he should postpone his work and focus on resolving the ethical implications first. On the other hand, if he truly believes in his quest - which he compares to a religious one - he should just quietly go ahead with his work. But what de Garis is effectively doing is saying "I'm going to build something that will kill your grandchilden - try and stop me!". What is allegedly an attempt to raise public awareness comes across more as an attempt to raise de Garis's own profile.