Bookforum Omnivore - The Age of Moral Machines

From Bookforum's Omnivore blog, a new collection of links that offer various perspectives on intelligent machines, from Ray Kurzweil's new project with Google to the not-too-far-away future of robots as "autonomous weapons," i.e., drone variations without the need for human navigators.


The age of moral machines

FEB 25 2013 

12:00PM

• From Technology Review, Ray Kurzweil plans tocreate a mind at Google — and have it serve you (and more). 
• From Transhumanity, Mark Waser on the “wicked problem” of existential risk with AI (artificial intelligence).
• Colin Allen reviews The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics by David J. Gunkel. 
• Killer instinct: Advances in neuroscience and technology could lead to the mind becoming the ultimate weapon. 
• Stephen Pincock on the rise of the (mini) machines: Mimicking nature, nanotechnology is creating machines that can self-assemble and take charge of their environment. 
• Our robot children: At what point will we trust robots to kill? 
• Killer robots must be stopped, say campaigners: “Autonomous weapons”, which could be ready within a decade, pose grave risk to international law. 
• The age of moral machines: An interview with Josh Storrs Hall on nanotech, AI and the Singularity.

TEDxNASA@SilconValley - Craig Venter - Synthetic Life

Here's some recent TEDx goodness, this time it's Craig Venter talking about synthetic DNA - and artificial life. Here is the article abstract from the project that created the first self-replicating artificial cell (you can read the whole article online for free - gotta love open access):

Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome


Daniel G. Gibson, John I. Glass, Carole Lartigue, Vladimir N. Noskov, .... J. Craig Venter


*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jcventer@jcvi.org


ABSTRACT


We report the design, synthesis, and assembly of the 1.08–mega–base pair Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 genome starting from digitized genome sequence information and its transplantation into a M. capricolum recipient cell to create new M. mycoides cells that are controlled only by the synthetic chromosome. The only DNA in the cells is the designed synthetic DNA sequence, including “watermark” sequences and other designed gene deletions and polymorphisms, and mutations acquired during the building process. The new cells have expected phenotypic properties and are capable of continuous self-replication.

Published Online May 20 2010
Science, 2 July 2010:
Vol. 329 no. 5987 pp. 52-56
DOI: 10.1126/science.1190719

You can read the Guardian UK article about it here.

And below is the TEDx Talk.

Synthetic Life.J. Craig Venter is a biologist who has led teams responsible for sequencing the first draft human genome, the first diploid human genome, and construction of the first self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell. He is founder and president of the J. Craig Venter Institute and founder and CEO of Synthetic Genomics, Inc.