What price Technological Singularity? Will humans evolve to become spirits in an ethereal world?

How close are we to becoming a new species?

Physical or ethereal?

Will future humans be physical or ethereal entities? Do we need to be physical entities or will we exist as humanoid robots or just as ethereal beings?

With robotics reaching unprecedented levels of advancement, and technology being able to extract data and video from human brains, we are reaching the stage of a potential nightmare scenario - in that we may become 'readable' by those with the technology to do so.

What happens when we leave our body?

Can we exist ethereally?

Yes. We have heard many counts of people on the operating table or in near death situations that have 'left' their Earth body, I have done it.

It allows you to hear and see all, which proves that your Earth body is merely the 'chassis' and you exist as an entity in your own right all the time, regardless of whether you are in your Earth body.

A hybrid Human - Robot machine may not be far away

Singularity - the blurring of the line between Human and Machine

The advance in technology that we have at present been experiencing, does bring us to appoint where on line, we are finding the difference between knowing we are dealing with a human or machine, seamless. In essence, we often don't give it a second thought.

To develop this scenario further, a project named Project Avatar has been set up.

The nuts and bolts of where Project Avatar seeks to go

The organisational table

Avatar - but what control do you have?

The situation we face is how much control do we have over the objectives of this idea? Who makes the rules? and who decides what they do or don't want to happen to them?

Avatar throws up a mass of issues which may include a trade-off for 'inclusion.' Is this good news?

As an ethereal entity, how would you exist, in which environment? Would this interfere with the 'natural order' of spiritual ascension and 'recycling' of human spirit to continue into another incarnation?

This presents difficult issues to contend with and may even raise issues of ethics to debate.

Above us the stars

The Anunnaki who came to Earth thousands of years in the past can according to research, live in either a physical manifestation as we do or as an ethereal one.

This then draws a line between them and us, as we are a distant cousin of theirs in that we are part of their genetic make-up, then we may well be able to exist in this format elsewhere.

It is a question of whether intervention is appropriate, to prevent our progression or do we simply choose to exist as a part physical / machine and spiritual entity?

Human futures - the next new science we must get on board with - it is our future!

The fantasy may soon have some seed of reality!

Brave new world? or approaching nightmare?

Are we humans sleepwalking towards obsolescence? A conversation our species needs to be having is about OUR future. Why?

Robots and automation. They are silently taking over our lives, but is this a bad thing?

In one way not, we will as a species be freed from menial things including work. For many of us, we do menial and pointless jobs just to receive money for it, to fuel a consumer society.

Futurists and many computer scientists believe that work as we know it will be just a memory, proxy living, the big data / open data resource and machine learning are the game changers for our species.

The benevolent looking image of the 1950's science fiction robot

Should we worry?

We should. Because all this is going on unchecked. We should have taken the warning from the entity that is the Internet, a sprawling and little policed catch-all situation that no one really actually 'manages' - it just exists.

Machine learning, sometimes erroneously referred to as 'AI' or artificial intelligence is becoming very advanced in how it can be shaped to mimic human behaviour.

In some situations, it passes the 'Turing Test' - that is the interaction between a human and a computer interface does not make the human suddenly think 'I am communicating with a machine'

Big Data - we all generate it by our computer actions -

it is valuable for some to own, trade and exploit it.

Seamless acceptance

As such, we give this  type of interaction not a second glance. Certainly for those born after the millennium, those that have grown up with the Smart Phone and Computer Tablet, this is not the 'new normal,' it is 'the normal.'

'Proxy living' is starting to seamlessly come in, it is software that essentially does things for you, in the future it will run our lives.

Think of the junk adverts that you get on your computer popping up when you have looked at something on the internet.

In the future, your 'virtual proxy' will be the 'virtual' Gatekeeper - a software algorithmic entity, either existing as a physical robot, humanoid or otherwise or a computer program app, that will handle all the marketing guff that you get into your inbox.

It will divert and destroy the unwanted communications and respond and analyse the 'wanted' or preferred subjects it receives. Freeing you up to get on with your life.

Humans are not required - how most work will be - and soon

Working and the future

In the 1950's the scientists predicted two future outcomes - driverless cars and a society where humans would not have to work.

We are near to this situation already. Driverless cars are nearing readiness to become commonplace on our roads. Professional drivers such as Cab drivers, bus and lorry drivers, train drivers, Postmen and Women - they are all at risk from the robot.

Much of the work we humans do is menial and can be done far more efficiently by robots. The Tax system, Benefits system to name but two could be far better handled by machines able to apply system logic to a multitude of rules and conditions 24 hours a day all year round.

The bottom line is they would be better at it and mistakes would be minimal. It would also save labour costs, salaries, office space, office furniture, office supplies and would help with the 'reality' of the 'paperless office' scenario. 

Nightmare or Utopia -  what is our future human - machine outcome?

A question of management

It is imperative that a 'Robot Manifesto' be established, we cannot allow the 'cyber-sprawl' situation that the Internet has become to dictate our future society. We are in great danger of becoming irrelevant as the machines learn and can self-learn and formulate policies of their own.

'AI' (Artificial Intelligence)  in its pure form, will work out very quickly that we as humans are a threat and an irrelevance - it's cold logic will quickly establish its own natural survival logic and find a way to get rid of us by proxy.

Humanoid Robots -  if they go 'bad' we are finished 

The nightmare scenario

The worst case scenario for us is that an AI entity energises a humanoid robot army to preserve the AI's material integrity - power source, by also prompting the Robot Army to self-replicate and produce Units and spare parts, thus the AI machine prolongs its own life by creating its own 'life helpers.'

AI and the Robot army will share the common interest of survival -  they will establish that they can be deactivated by humans simply by humans taking the power source away.

The nightmare for the humans is when the machine decides we are both an irrelevance and a danger.

 

 

Back to the 1960's? Was life better then? Have we really progressed?

Cliff Richard and the Shadows round 1962

usually hogging the top of the charts 

1962 seemed to be for most in the UK, a year that finally seemed to affirm that the country was moving into the modern age. The whole country seemed to suddenly move from monochrome to technicolour.

The daring styling of the Ford Consul Capri 109E -

a departure from the tired old car designs -

adopting modern American styling and the '4 headlight' look

Britain seemed to be largely shaking off the memory of the grim days of WW2 and post war rationing. Computers had thanks to the efforts at Bletchley Park, evolved from the embryonic work of Tommy Flowers in his Dollis Hill development inner sanctum to become the stuff of legend, the Bletchley legend that would remain hidden in secrecy for many years after the end of WW2.

Lyons made more than Ice Cream -

It became one of the big post war computer makers

until American giant IBM got a foothold in the market

Bletchley made great strides in technology for the early electronic computer industry. With the advances in post war electronics, computers started to develop at a rapid pace. As an emerging technology, the sky seemed to be the limit. This era was later referred to as the 'white heat  of technology.' Britain led the way for a while, with Lyons foods developing their own business computer and companies like Ferranti, building on the post WW2 development of the previous decade to produce modern computers.

  

Tinplate robots mostly made in Japan captured the post WW2

forward thrust towards space, technology and the future

Since the dawn of time, man as a species long wanted to create an automaton in the image of himself. With the advances in electronics, this no longer seemed to be a pipe dream, but a future obtainable concept. We are only now coming to the time when the seamless 'singularity' between a human and computer may arrive. The so-called 'Turing test' that determines that state of not being able to know the difference is not far off.

Space was indeed our final frontier and the race was on to build craft that could go into space and explore it for the rewards that might be there, such as us establishing colonies off this planet and lead us to becoming a type 1 civilisation. The 60's became the decade of the space race.

1962 was a boom time. Almost anything you bought in the shops over here was British made, anything else was clearly marked 'Foreign.' There was still a puffed out chestedness that as we had with America won WW2 and settled the Nazi's hash that we could justifiably feel proud of ourselves.

Anything you bought was more likely to be British made. This boom in production led to many being employed in factories across the nation. Our industrialisation was a success story that would only be marred by the stupidity of the unions that would lead to many of the industries either ceasing or being hobbled by ridiculous rhetoric and operating practices.

Certainly life was a lot simpler then in the world of the emerging new technologies. Life was better, not much more than a generation back it had endured the 1930's depression, WW2 and post war rationing. Now it was free and going places.

There was almost more work than people to fill the jobs, money was about and disposable income too meant that no more were you just able to hope, you could now have. Hire purchase gave many the have now pay later consumer lust and for a small down payment the have it now generation were able to live beyond their means.  A different story now where automation is silently taking jobs and High Street shops are closing at the rate of 15 a day.

With the days of plenty in the 1960's, the days of austerity and saving up were largely over.

Modernity in the home meant that many women who now chose to work could enjoy labour saving devices that were unobtainable a few years earlier. It all seemed rather civilised back then.

In some ways life was very much less complicated in those early 1960 's years. In fact to look back it almost seemed utopian. But not every family was this model of modernity, many still lived in appalling squalor and poverty, clearly the consumer age had not reached to them yet.

The post war boom from 1956 really showed that anything was obtainable. For someone in their 20's, this was the time, the best time to be alive.

We may have progressed in technological terms but we seem to have lost so much more as a consequence.

Set me back to 1962.

Future Robotics will be defined by Validity

Can Robots be fooled or is that Illogical, Spock?

In the future, how will Robots think? What will they need to 'know'? How will they define data, will they see it as we do in characters or will they take it in as Binary Data?

What if they get it wrong?

The Robot has come a long way from the Tinplate Tin Box tyrants of popular post WW2 Japanese toy maker's idea of the 'artificial' human.

Wired for Binary - our brains are wired too, electronically

the computer needs to adopt the parallel processor to get transfer

speeds of data and scenario modelling to the level of our 'wetware'

The quest from time immemorial has been to make a Robot Humanoid 'in the image' of us Humans, as we are now, indeed, what may we morph into in the future if Project Avatar becomes the norm?

Technology moves on at a blinding pace, so will we get 'there' and make a humanoid replicant like ourselves before we as a species expire?

Do we design a lookalike version or do we take the bold step and build Human 2.0 or a Human 3.0 which would make us Humans of today look like a 1908 Model T Ford against a Human 3.0 Ford Mustang GT 500 equivalent?

So we either future proof to some extent as we design or just build a like for like unit comparable unit.

The shape of things to come?

The Human 2.0 of tomorrow, perhaps?

The Human accumulates data 'knowledge' as it ages and grows, so would our Humanoid just have a basic OS (operating system) and then pull data in as required from an Ethereal Web Connection, or would it have a massive data bank on board, pre-loaded to know just about everything?

The benefit of the Ethereal connection would mean that the Humanoid could become an 'instant expert' on anything and have correct telemetric data information so that it could perform the task right first time, anytime, without having to 'machine learn' the process as Humans do.

It could turn its hand to anything from sculpture to playing a musical instrument without the need to learn. It may develop or have developed its own 'machine learning' so it can invent or improvise, cybernetic controls to the algorithmic 'learning' process would need to be in place to prevent damage to the unit and to us from its own 'jazz'.

Neurons can be replaced by processor chips,

but an effective heat transfer system is required

otherwise the heat could damage the hardware

The definition of data and how the Humanoid Robot will perceive, translate and use it is another question to consider. How the acquisition of data is achieved, whether an ocular input to the processing unit can recognise objects and apply telemetry data for handling and awareness purposes visually as we do, or whether the sensors will  assess the solidity of the objects and perhaps the molecular makeup, prior to interaction with them.

Validity of data is the thing we have to resolve

The big question we finally have to test is that of Validity of the data that the unit will perceive or interpret. That includes data from the Internet it taps into. What if it does tap into something that is incorrect?

This could be a very dangerous situation if the unit picks up bad data and it causes a problem for humans. We have to know if the three Asimov laws will be programmed in, or not. Or if the unit is told to ignore those, will it do so and cause harm?

A spot of Babbage - the first programmable mechanical computer

Essentially, Human safety has to be the paramount concern, the danger of a rogue Robot is the reality in the film 'Westworld,' but a very real one in our case. Even a static production line Robot if the software becomes corrupted, can cause damage if the safeguards don't work.

How much capacity we build in for the machine to 'learn' is another situation. There is always the capacity for a malevolent 'mad scientist' type to create electronic mayhem.

This is the reason we need a workable Robot Manifesto, we need to work within the parameters, or Robot Anarchy will ensue. That could finish us as a species! 

Future jobs, future skills - how to remain relevant and make it...

In the next 10 years, 9 million jobs will be lost to automation

The march of the Robots was a situation that worried the founder of Cybernetics Norbert Wiener just after WW2 when he could see from the advances of the by our standards primitive computer, that humans would lose out in the workplace to automation.

So what's at stake? For you as a potential victim, you need to take safeguard action.

Firstly, you need to get yourself transferable skills that you can take to new jobs.

Secondly, you need to be interested in things that Robots cannot do and learn to do those.

The Cyber Human is perhaps less than 50 years away

We hear a term being used now called 'Singularity.' That is when the robot becomes indistinguishable from the human. With 'on-line' communication, you may not always be aware that you are dealing with a machine.

In the flesh, you are because there is no second glance needed, the robot humanoid is still that and you an tell the difference even if it has cyberskin.

A computer may be able to do a lot of things but it doesn't have much intelligence. It relies on programmed conditional logic to operate. Much as we do but we work in different ways, through acquired learning. The computer mainly learns through downloaded information and some can learn through real scenario learning.

Future robot humanoids will have peer to peer communication by data

The average 4 year old child has better tactile recognition and response than many computerised units. This will come to a computerised human but only through a lot of development work in sensory telemetric data recognition and analysis capability.

What I am saying is that if it encounters a Bird's egg, it will be able to define it as such and handle it with the appropriate care and restraint, rather than crush it. In this case, the 4 year old can carefully handle the egg from the outset.

This gives us the situation of the machine having to build massive potential data banks of data based on the sensory information gained from everyday objects that we know of from acquired learning. But I am meandering a bit here....

The future skills humans will need are the skills that robots cannot do at present, such  as plumbing or wiring in a house where systems may need renewal or installation where there is no template 'plan' to work from. Situations where the human works out the strategy based on previous experience.

Another future proof way is to be as Mike Rowe says, 'Be interested in other people's crap' and also to follow your ability not your passion. By all means have hobbies and if these offer a genuine and possible progression into a career then do so if that is viable. But many people think they are just 'good enough' and the reality is they aren't.

What do other people not want to do? According to Ebay, in the UK there are on average up to £4000 value of items that people have and do not use, if you can sell that sort of thing for profit, that's an example of being interested in other people's crap, or selling your crap to other people

That said, there are due to the demographic vacuum left by generations of childless people in the UK an avenue where services will be needed and few to fill them. With an aging population, the burden on the young in time will be immense.

Future proof yourself before you become the future!

Human 2.0, the next stage of the species - the human - trans human - robot interface arrives

Transhuman engineering could be the next mega industry to come

Is the human species at the zenith of its development? Is there room for improvement or another option?

The human species is different to anything else on the planet, why? because it is an intervention species. Our supposedly closest link is a chimpanzee but that is not a viable reality, because even at about 98% similar, the disparity in genetic connections runs into the millions and means that the two could never breed. Even the Bonobo and Chimpanzee with an identical 98 % match cannot breed with each other. Some Gorilla species which look near identical are not compatible to breed.

Note the 2nd human chromosome joined as a pair,

this does not occur in nature it can only be done by modification, externally.

Something did this to our species. Nature did not.

So the human as we are today is advanced, but unless we can progress to using 30% of our brains as someone on the genius level does, we are going to remain as we are.

That said, we cannot use more than that capacity because of the heat issues the brain activity would generate and also the amount of energy the brain would consume from the food we intake, might not be enough, so where next?

Our spirit is an ethereal situation, it is our consciousness,

we still are aware of it even if we leave our bodies in near-death situations

therefore it must be external to our brains

Our situation does have an alternative, that is a plug and play humanoid shell. Used as a carrier, the human brain could be incorporated into this adjunctive shell. If you have ever experienced a near death experience and left your earth body, you will know that you are able to have a conscious and aware functioning experience without your 'human chassis.'

Your 'human chassis' has enough of a basic operating system in the brain to keep the vital resources running constantly. We know this because we do not die when we fall asleep.

Therefore, the 'spirit' if you like, the coherent force of life we all have, can be 'read' by computers and the details downloaded, dreams can now be captured. So we can perhaps move to a situation where we create a synthetic human, that can have its parts renewed and then keep the spirit living almost infinitely.

Real Human Robots from the Swedish Television series 'Real Humans.'

These autonomous humans are human robots called  'Hubots.'

A small number were created as organic and hybrid human robots - essentially Human 2.0

To do this, we are then creating a new sub species of ourselves, a Human 2.0. By this method, we can if the 'standard' human is lost to a disaster, relaunch and be immune to most things, if the spirit is retained as an ethereal and non-biological entity, then the human 2.0 is almost in most terms, indestructible.

So what is this future human's future? It depends. The end game of the human as we know it changes as Human 2.0 becomes normal, no longer is it conditioned to a situation of reproduction to ensure survival of the species.

Whilst in theory it can enjoy the things we do now, will it need them? What about consumerism and possessions? Moving to an ethereal 'virtual' awareness model, much like a Google car autonomous unit, the 'entity' may be artificially aware as a computer can be, by receiving data from sensors, but it does not have 'human consciousness' which the spirit has.

Certainly a move away from the current human model, may mean that the new powerplant of the future for these entities might require an organic fuel supply. Therefore farming may change to accommodate this.

The 'identity' or the 'spirit' in this human 2.0 may move on further from this concept, it may use a small super mini computer, with fibre optic cabling to cut down on heat generation and as such it could create and use a virtual concept of reality. But this sort of misses the point about what it is to be human, to have that spirit. To be an individual and not another clone of another clone.

But essentially, this upgrade scenario is no different from taking a hard disk from one computer to another. It's just for humans, we can't do this yet. We don't have a donor chassis for the job ready made, unless a person who had been killed, was kept in animated suspension with vital life resources artificially kept going until a suitable live brain unit and head was attached.

Human 2.0 is way to release those who have paralysis of the limbs, once we can transition to a level of robotic reality of appearance and movement, the use of a human 'conscious' 'CPU' for want of a better phrase, offers genuine release and freedom. Essentially, this person is no longer trapped and waiting to die. Once re-engineered, it has life again, meaningful life.

With development, our current 'organic' model human could be replaced by another 'organic' humanoid, which may have recyclable parts or self-renewing parts, derived from an organic situation, fuel and regeneration capability. Just instead of being as we are, we can be regrown by computerised 3D printing, 'self mapping.'

We have to ask ourselves, what quality of life we really want in the future, how long as individuals do we really want to live? what is our purpose in life and do we have a future?

The Human 2.0 is like the autonomous robot of tomorrow, it is up for discussion and the discussion needs to be had right now.

The Human Race or Species has to decide where it is going in the future, the current consumer society driven model is no longer viable.

The human of tomorrow has to be business like, it needs some purpose and objective, it needs more than junk television and fast food to fill its time.

the new Industrial Revolution with Real Humans, Robots and Human Robots needs to be managed, the Robot Manifesto is overdue

Humans, Robots and the time for a Robot Manifesto is upon us.

We have entered the age of a new industrial revolution, gradually and unwittingly as technology has advanced and crept up on us.

The last age of renaissance and future technology which started in the 1500's has led us to a new age. An age in which we are able to progress faster and more devastatingly than before.

Consider that we not only attained powered flight in 1903, but by 1961, a mere 58 years later, we had made the leap off of our planet and into Space. Such a technological feat meant that we had achieved more in those 58 years than collectively before. How many centuries had Humans desired to fly and yet in almost half a century we had done that plus.

The Human Race is at a place now where it is on the verge of producing viable, humanoid robots, that will look like us and with which we can interact. This is in its infancy and will become a fact in the next twenty years for some situations like elderly care where this is gaining a tentative foothold.

Perhaps the sex partners of tomorrow will be Humanoid silicon skinned beings that we can design the features of and have produced for us. Their sexual capability being an adjunct of their other uses around the house perhaps.

Indeed, a mechano-electro- organic humanoid a 'Human 2.0' is the logical progression from the Scientist's geeky fantasy and from the robot sex doll. In fact this is the best way forward for humanity, a race of good looking, emotionally stable, useful co-existors to humanity.

It is suggested that we Humans may go beyond mere 'wet ware' bipeds and become part of a 'Man machine' or 'Woman machine' species - Scientists are finding ways to 'download' the memories and operating system of our mind, to put these into a machine base that can be repaired, upgraded and renewed almost to the end of time brings us to a new stage.

How sad it is that memories of events of a person are lost to the mind of the dead person, the 'video' dies with them. If we could only capture that!

We are now on the point of creating a new species of a sort. We are as a species, the only one on the planet that has so far reached this possibility.

Scary.

Look at the damage we have done as a species, as a consequence of being equipped with our brains and so-called level of intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence or 'AI' in its pure form is the single most dangerous entity we could bring to life. The term 'AI' is bandied about and usually relates to encompass algorithmic computer learning systems, not the pure 'I -Robot' stand alone machine we should fear.

The danger is an 'I-Robot' AI machine may quickly work out for itself that humans are a danger to it, could switch it off, or destroy it in extreme circumstances. The 'I-Robot' would need to safeguard its power and energy supply over and above that of our needs.

It would have to 'look after number 1.' It would learn that requirement very quickly, by analysis of human behaviour, as well as historically, it if it got access to the Internet.

With the Humanoid robots, the 'I-Robot' could unite and collectively gang up on the real humans and essentially by the greater use of Robots in the workplace, build a silent army of 'beings' that would be able to replicate and repair themselves, use and safeguard power sources and do all this without us.

And ultimately take over from us.

Thinks this is scary? It is possible.

This is the reason that we need to discuss the 'Robot Manifesto' to safeguard our existence otherwise we will be sleepwalking into extermination. We need to discuss the parameters that we allow automation to possess, otherwise we are finished.

Or perhaps that is what the 'New World Order' wants, a situation where a small elite clique of Humans is able to, or thinks it will be able to, bargain and c0-exist with an AI community.

The AI machine will look after No1. Itself.

It will then be like we never existed.