Will | For 130,000 years, our capacity to reason has remained unchanged. The combined intellect of the neuroscientists, mathematicians and... hackers... in this auditorium pales in comparison to the most basic AI. Once online, a sentient machine will quickly overcome the limits of biology. And in a short time, its analytic power will become greater than the collective intelligence of every person born in the history of the world. So imagine such an entity with a full range of human emotion. Even self-awareness. Some scientists refer to this as "the Singularity." I call it "Transcendence."I find this 2014 film, starring Johnny Depp and Rebecca Hall as the erstwhile scientist couple Will and Evelyn Caster, simply enthralling. To be sure, there is quite a bit that's uncertain and frightening about what they do, but the notion of uploading our consciousness onto a super computer; shedding what a poet called a dying animal (Sailing to Byzantium, Poem by William Butler Yeats); and reconstituting our being in a vastly expansive universe is, quite frankly, stunning.
Max | This thing [i.e. uploaded Will] is like any intelligence. It needs to grow, to advance. Right now it's settling somewhere it thinks it's safe from outside threats. Somewhere its massive appetite for power can be met. But it will want more than that. After a while survival won't be enough. It will expand, evolve, influence - perhaps the entire world.That new being isn't just exponentially intelligent, but also godly capable. Because the transcendent Will can manipulate nanoparticles, he can quickly heal wounded colleagues, even resurrect them from the dead, and endow them with superhuman strength. Will can create material, build apparatus, and fabricate the high technology platform he needs to survive forever, all seemingly out of thin air.
Audience | So you want to create a god? Your own god?Reference: Transcendence Quotes.
Will | That's a very good question. Isn't that what man has always done?
Right.
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