Keeping The Door has a groovy interview withGreg Egan , in which he talks about his next two books , and why artificial intelligence operation may not be as cheeseparing as you think — and that may be a good matter .
The gruelling science - fiction mastermind ’s description of his next two record voice reasonably challenging , especially the second one :
Zendegi is set in Iran in the very dear hereafter ; the first part of the novel takes place in 2012 . The ultimate focus of the story involves brain map and virtual reality , but the background of all the characters are entwined with the Iranian pro - democracy movement in various way . It ’s due to be published in mid-2010 .
Orthogonal is a novel I ’m knead on right now ; it ’s localize in a universe with laws of physics that are unlike from our own . One minor alteration in a profound equality – just turning a negative star sign into a positive sign – guide to some improbably fat variations in everything from the way biology sour to the relativistic effects of space travel .
He also explains why we may not be as close to creating A.I. as you ’d consider , and why we should tread cautiously :
I ca n’t say I ’m disappointed , or surprised , that we do n’t have artificial intelligence yet . I ’ve write things where conscious computer software is make in the close future tense , but it ’s unremarkably in the grade of direct copies of human minds , so it ’s more a matter of us migrating from our bodies than make a new shape of intelligence operation from simoleons .
At the moment we ’re so far away from create any kind of witting software that it ’s hard to jazz which candidate are naturalistic , and which are staring illusion . When we do finally grope our way towards some touchable results , I hope we carry on slowly and carefully , because this has the voltage to lead to a lot of suffering .
The present generation of human being emerged out of hundreds of million of geezerhood of beast pull each other ’s throat out , and ten-spot of thousands of years of mass being prey to famine and disease . We might aspire to do much good than that , but creating an entirely new kind of intelligence that ’s happy with its own place in the mankind is an incredibly daunting candidate .
Interestingly , he also says he call back brain - mapping may be the most bright new technology being developed right now .
Egan also explains why he did n’t publish any books for four age ( he was working to help refugee in Australia ) , why he does n’t countenance any photos of himself on the cyberspace , and why he avoids science - fable conventionalism . [ keep start the Door ]
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