Author David Simpson: How a Future of Post-Humans & Strong A.I. Will Coalesce

By B.J. Murphy

David Simpson, author of the Post-Human sci-fi book series, is no stranger to Serious Wonder. Having already conducted two interviews with the author, our readers likely have a good understanding of both his books and short film. But what about his actual vision of the future? Below is a TED Talk that Simpson had given in December, where he discusses the future of Post-Humans, Strong A.I., and how the two might actually coalesce.

The entire collection of David Simpson’s Post-Human book series. (Credit: David Simpson)

There’s a lot in this video for you to go through and to conceptualize. And we know that not everyone might have the schedule to watch the entire video in one fell swoop. So to summarize what David Simpson talks about in his TED Talk, Serious Wonder reached out to Simpson to explain his vision for the future, of which is provided below:

“In this TEDx talk, I speak about our Post-Human future. I tell the audience about my passion, which is communicating with the world, via my books and films, what many of the most successful and intelligent people in the tech and science realms have been telling us for some time, which is that we may be as little as fifteen years away from achieving strong artificial intelligence, meaning A.I. that surpasses current human capability.

First, I outline how and why luminaries such as Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil came to believe the timeline is so short, and why Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk think we need to be aware of it and its profound implications.

Then I tackle one scenario whereby we might successfully meet the challenge of bringing a superhuman level machine intelligence into existence without it meaning an end to human life. Though the future will be “post-human,” in the sense that we will merge with our technology and take control of our evolution, it doesn’t mean that we have to leave behind the best aspects of humanity—namely our propensity for goodness. I think by focusing on this aspect—the heroic best in humanity—when building strong A.I., we give ourselves the best chance for success and for a future beyond our current abilities to even imagine.”

February 15, 2016 By B.J. Murphy

About the author

B.J. Murphy is the Editor and Social Media Manager of Serious Wonder. He is a futurist, philosopher, activist, author and poet. B.J. is an Affiliate Scholar for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) and an Ambassador for the robotics company Humai.

Human Origin

Start (origin of original ) in making AI is crucial ( what has been missing)… And it is done. https://evolutionofhumanintelligence.wordpress.com/ The human evolution must perform / accomplish the evolution of intelligence, but I have found only “the evolution of emotions”. These three processes intersect at one point – baby .That is not an evolutionary mistake, on the contrary, that is the key element. By observing his mother’s behavior, a process called MSP/multi self-projection passively occurs in baby’s brain when child perceives guardians body as his own. That way infant’s CNS immediately learns the shortest way to get something done which enables the creation of many more similar thinking processes till the moment when a minimal number of thinking processes are required in order to effect of self-consciousness arise.