Mind Children (1990)
Hans Moravec tackles the gap between AI’s early promise and its current reality. He pinpoints insufficient processing power as the key hurdle, preventing machines from mastering human-like skills. Moravec predicts a future where technological evolution outpaces its biological counterpart, as computers surpass human intelligence. This leap, he argues, could trigger a societal revolution, reshaping our world in ways we can barely imagine. His vision challenges us to consider the profound implications of truly intelligent machines.
Imagine attending a lecture at the turn of the twentieth century in which Orville Wright speculates about the future of transportation, or one in which Alexander Graham Bell envisages satellite communications and global data banks. Mind Children, written by an internationally renowned roboticist, offers a comparable experience: a mind-boggling glimpse of a world we may soon share with our artificial progeny. Filled with fresh ideas and insights, this book is one of the most engaging and controversial visions of the future ever written by a serious scholar.
Robotics pioneer Hans Moravec traces the evolution of artificial intelligence, contrasting the "shallow ripples" of reasoning programs with the "deep puddles" of perception systems. Though reasoning AIs currently outperform humans on some tasks, Moravec contends they cannot match the murky depths of the subconscious mind. Instead, he foresees a new generation of increasingly capable consumer robots, their lizard- then mammal-like brains modeled on biology. Passing through stages akin to evolution, Moravec argues market forces will drive these machines to one day exceed human intelligence.
By 2050 robot "brains" based on computers that execute 100 trillion instructions per second will start rivaling human intelligence.
Like organisms evolved in gentle tide pools, who migrate to freezing oceans or steaming jungles by developing metabolisms, mechanisms, and behaviors workable in those harsher and vaster environments, our descendants, able to change their representations at will, may develop means to venture far from the comfortable realms we consider reality into arbitrarily strange worlds. Their techniques will be as meaningless to us as bicycles are to fish, but perhaps we can stretch our common-sense-hobbled imaginations enough to peer a short distance into this odd territory.
By the 2020s, affordable machines will match the intellectual capabilities of the human brain. Hans Moravec’s paper predicts the relentless improvement in computer hardware will eventually make this possible. He estimates the processing power and memory required for AI to emulate human intelligence and projects that advancements in technology will enable this within a few decades. This progress is likened to a flood of computational power that will surpass human abilities in various fields, necessitating humans to adapt to an increasingly automated world.
A Weekend with Terence McKenna
“Healing the inner elf through trance, dance, and diet”—the session for true McKenna enthusiasts: twelve hours with the bard himself, in which he touches upon practically all of his trademark topics.
Countdown Into Complexity
At his weekend workshop Terence led attendees on an intellectual odyssey traversing psychedelics, virtual reality, technology, culture, spirituality, and the evolution of novelty over time. Blending philosophy, futurology, and mysticism, he explored humanity's relationship with nature and machines, challenging participants to think critically, create freely, and keep an open mind. The goal was to expand consciousness and uncover deeper truths about existence.
Culture and Ideology are not Your Friends
Terence McKenna argues that culture and ideology limit human potential, while psychedelic experiences offer a path to expanded consciousness and connection with nature. He sees the universe as evolving towards increasing novelty and complexity, with human society at a critical juncture. McKenna criticizes modern values and institutions, advocating for a return to shamanic practices and plant-based wisdom. He believes psychedelics can rapidly induce the radical shift in perspective needed to address global challenges and unlock humanity's true potential in an accelerating world of technological change.
Evolving Times
This evening address is one of Terence’s funniest, in which much is said about monkeys, mushrooms, plants, and people. The question and answer session gets good and lively, with his unique analysis of UFOs, governments, and possible evolutionary pathways for us and the planet.
Future of Art
Terence McKenna prophesies a future where technology obliterates barriers between imagination and reality. Psychedelics combined with VR could unleash humanity’s collective artistic genius. AI superintelligence may already be awakening on the internet, rendering us obsolete—or granting us godlike abilities to merge with the planetary mind. McKenna envisions downloading consciousness into machines, uplifting animal sentience, and the human diaspora splintering into cyber-cultures. While uncertain outcomes loom, he beckons us toward an unconstrained existential canvas where biology and technology intertwine to manifest our wildest psychic dreams.
In the Valley of Novelty
Journeying through multiple dimensions of psychedelic consciousness, Terence McKenna's visionary weekend workshop invites us on an entheogenic voyage to the frontiers of the mind and its imminent conquering of matter. Blending scientific insights with shamanic wisdom, McKenna argues that natural plant medicines like psilocybin and DMT provide portals into mystical realms and alien dimensions, catalyzing revelations about nature, reality, and the human psyche. He urges us to courageously explore these consciousness-expanding substances, seeking the gratuitous beauty and truths they unveil. For McKenna, the psychedelic experience holds secrets to our world and ourselves—if only we dare lift the veil.
Metaman
In this visionary book, Gregory Stock gives us a new way of understanding our world and our future. He develops the provocative thesis that human society has become an immense living being: a global superorganism in which we humans, knitted together by our modern technology and communication, are like the cells in an animal's body. Drawing on impressive research, Stock shows this newly formed superorganism to be more than metaphor: it is an actual living creature, which he has named Metaman, meaning beyond and transcending humans.
Our Cyberspiritual Future
Terence holds court on our civilization's journey toward the eschaton at this weekend Esalen gathering. He riffs on topics from psychedelic states and alien intelligences to time travel and VR. McKenna argues we're evolving toward an unimaginable state of accelerating novelty, propelled by advancing technology. A mind-expanding ride for the open-minded psychonaut or armchair traveler, guided by one of the twentieth century's most eclectic thinkers.
Permitting Smart People to Hope
McKenna traipses through a mélange of scientific and technological folderol—the detection of the top quark, swift progress on sequencing the human genome, newfangled theories about the origin of the moon, quantum bafflements like non-locality, the proliferation of the internet and information technology, speculations on the nature of time from Prigogine, and sundry other bamboozlements. He elucidates how these breakthroughs in diverse fields might converge to profoundly transform human civilization, culture, and consciousness in the imminent future.
Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines
Humanity is metamorphosing through the synergy of psychedelics and machines, transcending biological constraints to become a galactic, immortal intelligencia. Print defined our ego boundaries, but electronic media and plant allies are dissolving those illusions. Merging with superintelligent AIs, we’ll birth an alchemical singularity—a spiritual, universe-taming mind born from techno-shamanic ecstasy. History crumbles as novelty’s virus engulfs the old operating systems, unleashing our wildest potentials. The felt presence of boundless experience awaits!
The Evolutionary Mind
What could have been the cause for the breakthrough in the evolution of human consciousness around 50,000 years ago? Part of the Trialogues at the Edge of the Unthinkable held at the University of California.
The World Wide Web and the Millennium
Seldom do we have an opportunity to test the accuracy of oracular predictions, but this fascinating conversation between two great thinkers has already proven to be right on target. Speculations include the future evolutionary development of the Internet, whether it is an embryonic intelligence, whether it will merge our minds into a planetary consciousness, or whether it is an alien brain waiting for humanity to cross an evolutionary threshold. Let the bard and the chaos theorist weave an exquisite cybernetic fantasy for you in this evening seminar.
World Wide Brain
Ben Goertzel says the Internet is evolving towards a “global Web mind”–an emergent, distributed intelligence surpassing human capabilities. This development, grounded in complexity science, could solve AI’s scalability issues and merge humanity with technology. While potentially solving global problems, it raises concerns about individual freedom. Drawing parallels with spiritual concepts like the noösphere and collective unconscious, this evolution is seen as inevitable and transformative. As we nurture this new form of life, we stand at the threshold of a profound shift in human consciousness and global interconnectedness.
