I’ve thought on and off for a long time about what changes it would take to make a more complex brain capable of imagining more complex things. Another layer? The recent topic of language and brains made me realize language enables humans to work together in extremely large groups, sometimes with the members separated by historical time, or locality to solve problems none of us could solve on our own. Hundreds of people worked on the Manhattan project with no one knowing anything about what they were building beyond the piece they were working on. Together, we’re the next layer of abstraction. Next up are the emergent social organisms that we are all part of that cause us so much grief. Society itself is the brain and we’re the columns communicating through language. Nature builds on the cheap.
Anyway, here’s Wonderwall. We get to write and tell the story of what intelligent machines will do for us. We don’t have to wait and hope a group of charitable billionaires will build a robot that can do all the housework a grown man avoids. The use of the land of Monty is a great example of how to do that. To reach the general public and change their ideas of what intelligent machines can and will do in the near future will send a signal to direct the collective attention away from confusion about what’s not working now, to imagining what what we can collectively create to make things better for everyone. It may not be received, but it will be sent. Using Lego for the vision project in the hackathon was a great choice. There’s children who will be in high school and college when this project has completed its part and created the framework for other people to build with and on.
This project has the potential to lower energy requirements because farming robots can use solar powered charging stations in the fields and work collectively as a swarm to plant, tend, and harvest crops – shaded in places by the panels that power them. Anyone will be able to download the plans off the internet and print the parts. Robots could do non-intrusive crop cultivation in the space we use for lawns. Vertical gardening on the sides of hi-rise buildings, parking structures and other places it’s not practical for humans to do the work at all. If machines are literally doing all the work, we’re free to take a leisurely wind and solar powered sail around the globe yacking on the internet. Taking months to sail around the globe require sacrifice if you don’t need to be doing anything else and you’re able to stay connected to people.
If you can’t imagine something you can’t prepare for it, can’t create it or seek it out, and won’t recognize it when you encounter it. We need more of the type of simple explanations that lead to more complex ones like the land of Monty does, to help excite the public and give them crazy ideas about what they could do with an actually intelligent machine to improve their life and the lives of those around them. A robot that can identify and clean up dog poop in the yard, for example. Imagination and possibility together leads a significant portion of people to look for ways to make those ideas happen.
Hopefully some better writers will get excited and want to get involved soon. 