Michael Zimmerman

In this post I consider some of the challenges posed by attempts to create artificial intelligence, as well as some of the dangers inherent in comparing human consciousness with AI. According to Ray Kurzweil and transhumanists who promote the coming “Singularity,” within a few decades AI will become self-conscious and will then redesign itself to be vastly more intelligent than humankind. The significance of such an eventuality is difficult to overestimate. If AI does constitute the future of consciousness, then AI may “go all the way up,” in the sense of expanding itself in ways that are to us incomprehensible to us, but that may end up transforming the nature of the universe. However intriguing it is to contemplate such eventualities, they could not occur without taking the first step: creating conscious AI. Will this ever happen?

In a nutshell, multinaturalism claims that there are many different natures, perhaps as many as there are different cultures. We are naïve, then, if we think—as I once did—that there is One True Nature to which everyone is referring when speaking of nature. Multinaturalists maintain that there is no universally agreed upon concept of nature; instead, specific ideas, histories, values, and beliefs are always helping to construct what shows up as and counts for “nature” in any particular culture.

Recently, a deservedly prominent integral thinker expressed to me his concern that what I have said about anthropogenic climate change may be inadvertently giving comfort to those who claim that humans have no influence on Earth’s climate. Given the consequences of the worst case scenario of climate change, including temperature increases of up to 4 Cº or more and dramatic rises in sea level, I am glad that my interlocutor encouraged me to clarify my position in regard to the role played by humans in climate change. 

In this fourth and final installation of Michael Zimmerman's "singularity" series, we take a close look at how Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the Overman as it applies to Ray Kurzweil's description of the immanent technological singularity that we are rapidly moving toward. "What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal," says Nietzsche—but a bridge to what? Let's explore....