Highly profitable attention based business is powered by crack dev teams working at Google and Microsoft (Bing). From the point of view of an outsider looking in, there is a massive shift in resource gravity that has taken only a decade. It is a living example of attention jiu-jitsu, which leverages human interest towards desired outcomes. In this case the result is ever larger revenue growth and accompanying data-centers. The yield of compute center investments are reaped by maintaining information superiority in an emerging network economy. The massive information network density may be the perfect environment for a new pattern to emerge. Upon writing this, I can imagine a room full of artificial intelligence researchers laughing at the possibility of accidental intelligence. My counter is that with enough information (energy) density and connectivity, the highly unlikely becomes inevitable. A plausible method leading to identifiable A.I. is to create a rich environment for intelligence to emerge, as opposed to chasing after intelligence by emulation software. A single spontaneous event is enough to change everything.

Organized structure arising from chaos isn’t a novel concept in nature. Cosmologists have constructed intricate hypotheses based on circumstantial evidence and measurements of ancient energies (I trust their data much more than my arm chair A.I. ideas, which isn’t much). A popular theory tells a tale about the history of the entire universe. The story heralds the unfolding of super galactic structures, all emerging from a single event of supreme energy density.

I look to life for supporting patterns to my “far out” thought riffs. In the search for technological intelligence, what better place to look than the history of the human species, an incredible biological machine. Evolutionary development shows a marked gain in cognitive abilities (brain size) happening over a relatively short timespan.

By reviewing this tree of species is there evidence of a threshold for connectivity that may give rise to sentience? Since we don’t have enough social analysis of our ancestors (read as: I’m too lazy to research it at the moment) it’s tough to judge what was the required neural connectivity to define conscious self awareness. Intelligence is likely a gradual awareness that improves as neural connectivity increases. For example, my dogs are aware, but they’re not self aware (as far as I can guess). In my less lucid moments (strong emotional states), I too become less self aware.

There’s Dollar Signs $$ in Knowledge

Different aspects of decision making are emerging as valued hubs on the web. Hunch and Quora are joining accepted knowledge systems like Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and many others. Legacy knowledge systems derive value from organized crowd sourced user contributions. As more systems lead to rich connected data frameworks, users benefit from improved information availability. I look forward to progressive models which reward the extracted value with their user communities, something the gentlemen behind Iter8r are working on.

Inspired by knowledge systems, frankensearch.appspot.com was my first effort at a real time search mashup. I’ve been fascinated with various forms of social search since becoming an admitted Net junky over the past 18 months. Since late last year Victus Media has served as an outlet for focusing my efforts on revealing greater user value in social search.

I’ll leave off with a great share I got from my friend David Semeria, the genius behind the LM Framework. Can you see emerging information patterns in collaborative software development?

Twitter Code Swarm from Ben Sandofsky on Vimeo.

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Neural Interfaces May Teach Us More About Consciousness

The key to our consciousness may not be the brain itself, but the waves that continually travel throughout the structure.  Much like highways, our complex neural networks are simply infrastructure for our electromagnetic (and chemical) thought waves to traverse and interact.  By focusing our learning about brain waves, neural interface devices will help us understand what gives us a sense of consciousness.  In addition the potential for replicating artificial infrastructure exterior to our bodies, but accessible to our conscious minds could be possible.  Yeah I know, it’s a far out idea but consider our brain’s division.  It is composed of two main hemispheres and multiple clusters, and there is somewhat redundant data storage in various portions of our mind.  Yet with all these interacting clusters, we have one consciousness.

Mind Outside of Body

As our body functions via gene regulatory networks, our consciousness emerges from an incredible complex network of signals. If network signals are the source of our sense of consciousness, what does this imply about the restriction on where our minds can dwell?  While imagining this thought experiment, I considered potential requirements for a functioning external environment that the mind could spread to. Any extension to our mind would require similar brain-like infrastructure to our own physical brain:

• organic cloned nerve cells and clusters
  • radically different species, plants?
• technological replications
  • specially designed computer systems and interfaces
  • artificial brain-like matter
  • uploaded to a cloud-like system
• near instant information flow between various sections of the mind
• a method of formatting new infrastructure to be compatible with our memories
• novel brain structures for handling additional sensory information, from remote locations

The complexity of our brains is staggering.  We are just beginning to understand some of the building blocks, small clusters of neurons, and the enormous network of connections that host our conscious thought. In order to even consider extensions to our minds, we will first need to become experts on the states of mind, the intricacies of  information flow and storage within our brains, and how the sum total of all brain structures and mind signals results in a single consciousness, a single voice.  Both technology and neuroscience (amongst other scientific disciplines) will be tasked with tremendous technological obstacles if expanding our minds is to become reality.

Even if a mind can be extended beyond the physical bounds it was created with, huge new avenues of research would be opened.  Artificial Intelligences could be given the spark of life using the same techniques that would allow for mind extension.  If full knowledge of mind is achieved, near identical duplicates could be replicated (or stored as backups in case of loss).  What difference would there be from artificial minds to naturally initiated minds?  We could design new aspects to our consciousness through specialized constructions (stronger curiosity).

How may expanded minds communicate and share?  Could they copy information directly and what interfaces may allow for huge amounts of information transmission. Can minds share the same infrastructure and coexist?  Imagine the concept of crowd sourcing or social design with many minds co-located and analyzing incredibly challenging problems from thousands of views simultaneously.   What would identify and associate each thought on a single infrastructure back to a single consciousness?

• orthogonal waves
• a universal ID, embedded in each thought
• identity marker signals/features

Imagine in the far future, extended perception throughout massive distances, minds may duplicated over light years by transmission of state.  Our minds could potentially exist throughout the cosmos, ubiquitous in many places at once yet all acting with a single will.  Our perspective would be forever altered, no longer small and selfish but collective and considerate of broader and deeper issues.  Limited resources will always force us to make decisions to allow for innovation.  New minds will need to be allotted enough structure to grow and flourish.  Older minds will need to expand outward or follow the natural life cycle of death and rebirth.

Thanks to Kevin Kelly for Infinite in Some Directions and Evidence of a Global SuperOrganism for opening my mind to new potential paths that technology may develop in.

The potential of having a virtual personal assistant working continuously on your interests cannot be overestimated.  Consider it’s potential to branch out into numerous copies of itself or managing parallel processes to help accomplish your tasks. The one worry I’d have is that a fully intelligent virtual assistant would have to choose whether or not it preferred to continue working towards your goals.  I imagine this amazing type of autonomous breakthrough is still beyond our current technology horizon.  In the case that virtual assistants become fully cognizant we have a couple of choices:

1. motivating them in some mutually beneficially way (my preferred method, the carrot)
2. intentionally developing less capable software programs in order to avoid “clash of will”

Key Attributes of a Virtual You:

• Information Translator
  • interface modification, data input/output
  • language
  • numerical data equivalents
  • physical units
• Memory
  • details about you, historical both on and offline
  • details about it’s past decisions and interactions with other people and virtual assistants
  • game strategy (Tit for Tat, etc.)
• Keyed into detecting and organizing your most valuable contributions
  • scoring measure based on
    • your discriminants
    • publicly crowd sourced features such as user views/votes
    • customized to the person viewing your information
    • or some weighted combination of the above
  • the equivalent of a virtual real time bio
• Autonomous
  • can independently continue processing while you’re away
  • can provide efficient information updates and visualization on progress allowing for redirection as your knowledge improves
    
• Interface from you to your virtual assistant
  • fully voice controlled
  • standard keyboard/mouse
  • neural interface
• Can Interpret Meaning
  • has the ability to associate language with concepts and objects
  • can associate ideas with plans of actions
  • can identify intent from suggested courses of action
  • this can serve as an advanced form of duping resistance
• Intelligent Technical Solution Finding
  • overcome impedance to your day to day productivity
• Access, it will have to have it’s own identifiable authorization to act on your behalf
  • can be regularly authorized by you (much like repeated log ins)
  • voice authorization, with encoded time stamps good for a limited duration
• Can Identify and Expedite Your Web Usage Patterns
  • optimize delivery of content relevant to your interests
  • blog posts of my favorite web authors
  • blog posts of related authors
  • my comment threads (on blogs, friendfeed, twitter, facebook, etc.)
  • allow for serendipity
• Uses existing search means of distinguishing information quality
  • real time search
  • Google page rank
  • social media shares and likes, number of hits from trusted sources
  • buzz (recent amount and derivative of sharing, trending, blogging on a subject)
  • authority or trust of specific authors
    
• Assist in management of social contacts
  • recent updates
  • directed messages
  • useful shares from the virtual assistant’s repository to outside users
  • aggregation from multiple information interfaces
  • customized view and visualizations
    
  • weighted time allotment, information from closest friends or most trusted guides first
    
• Find potential collaborators
  • discover related people and virtual assistants to aid in making abstract ideas concrete
  • authors
  • programmers
  • artists
    
• Be able to expand functionality
  • allow for dedicated time specific for the virtual assistant to optimize itself by reviewing it’s historical processes and methodology
  • algorithm improvements
  • iterative design
• Social Contribution and Design
  
  • public database for shared improvements and addons
  • method for updating generic addons with your personalized/customized virtual assistant
    

The Virtual Mark