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Hugo de Garis

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Hugo de Garis
De Garis in 2006
Born1947 (age 77–78)
Sydney, Australia
OccupationAI expert
Transhumanism
Issues
People
Influential works
Variants
Related topics

Hugo de Garis (born 1947) is an Australian retired researcher in the sub-field of artificial intelligence (AI) known as evolvable hardware. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he performed research on the use of genetic algorithms to evolve artificial neural networks using three-dimensional cellular automata inside field programmable gate arrays.[1] He has written about his belief in an coming war between the supporters and opponents of intelligent machines, with the potential for the elimination of humanity by artificial superintelligences.[2]

Career

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De Garis originally studied theoretical physics, but he abandoned this field in favour of artificial intelligence. In 1992 he received his PhD from Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.

From 1993 to 2000 de Garis was a researcher at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kansai Science City, Japan. At ATR's Human Information Processing Research Laboratories (ATR-HIP), he aimed to create a billion-neuron artificial brain he called a "cellular automata machine brain" (CAM-brain) by the year 2001.[1][3] De Garis moved to Starlab in Brussels in 2000, and the HIP laboratory was closed in February 2001.[4] Starlab went bankrupt in 2001. De Garis published his last "CAM-Brain" research paper in 2002.[5]

He was associate professor of computer science at Utah State University from 2001 to 2006. Starting in June 2006 he was part of the advisory board of Novamente, a commercial company which aimed to create artificial general intelligence. After 2006 he was a professor at Xiamen University and Wuhan University where he taught theoretical physics and computer science. In 2008 he received a 3 million Chinese yuan grant (around $436,000) to build an artificial brain for China as part of the Brain Builder Group at Wuhan University.[6] He served on the editoral board of Engineering Letters.[7] De Garis retired in late 2010.[8]

The Artilect War

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Hugo de Garis believes that a major war before the end of the 21st century, resulting in billions of deaths, is almost inevitable.[9]: 234  Intelligent machines (or "artilects", a shortened form of "artificial intellects") will be far more intelligent than humans and will threaten to attain world domination, resulting in a conflict between "Cosmists", who support the artilects, and "Terrans", who oppose them (both of these are terms of his invention). He describes this conflict as a "gigadeath" war, reinforcing the point that billions of people will be killed.[10][11] This scenario has been criticised by other AI researchers, including Chris Malcolm, who described it as "entertaining science fiction horror stories which happen to have caught the attention of the popular media".[12] Kevin Warwick called it a "hellish nightmare, as portrayed in films such as the Terminator".[9]: back cover 
In 2005, de Garis published a book describing his views on this topic entitled The Artilect War: Cosmists vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines.[9]

Cosmism is a moral philosophy that favours building or growing strong artificial intelligence and ultimately leaving Earth to the Terrans, who oppose this path for humanity. The first half of the book describes technologies which he believes will make it possible for computers to be billions or trillions of times more intelligent than humans. He predicts that as artificial intelligence improves and becomes progressively more human-like, differing views will begin to emerge regarding how far such research should be allowed to proceed. Cosmists will foresee the massive, truly astronomical potential of substrate-independent cognition, and will therefore advocate unlimited growth in the designated fields, in the hopes that "super intelligent" machines might one day colonise the universe. It is this "cosmic" view of history, in which the fate of one single species, on one single planet, is seen as insignificant next to the fate of the known universe, that gives the Cosmists their name. Hugo identifies with that group and noted that it "would be a cosmic tragedy if humanity freezes evolution at the puny human level".[13]

Terrans, on the other hand, will have a more "terrestrial" Earth-centred view, in which the fate of the Earth and its species (like humanity) are seen as being all-important. To Terrans, a future without humans is to be avoided at all costs, as it would represent the worst-case scenario. As such, Terrans will find themselves unable to ignore the possibility that super intelligent machines might one day cause the destruction of the human race—being very immensely intelligent and so cosmically inclined, these artilect machines may have no more moral or ethical difficulty in exterminating humanity than humans do in using medicines to cure diseases. So, Terrans will see themselves as living during the closing of a window of opportunity, to disable future artilects before they are built, after which humans will no longer have a say in the affairs of intelligent machines.

It is these two extreme ideologies which de Garis believes may herald a new world war, wherein one group with a "grand plan" (the Cosmists) will be rabidly opposed by another which feels itself to be under deadly threat from that plan (the Terrans). The factions, he predicts, may eventually war to the death because of this, as the Terrans will come to view the Cosmists as "arch-monsters" when they begin seriously discussing acceptable risks, and the probabilities of large percentages of Earth-based life going extinct. In response to this, the Cosmists will come to view the Terrans as being reactionary extremists, and will stop treating them and their ideas seriously, further aggravating the situation, possibly beyond reconciliation.

Throughout his book, de Garis states that he is ambivalent about which viewpoint he ultimately supports, and attempts to make convincing cases for both sides. He elaborates towards the end of the book that the more he thinks about it, the more he feels like a Cosmist, because he feels that despite the horrible possibility that humanity might ultimately be destroyed, perhaps inadvertently or at least indifferently, by the artilects, he cannot ignore the fact that the human species is just another link in the evolutionary chain, and must become extinct in their current form anyway, whereas the artilects could very well be the next link in that chain and therefore would be excellent candidates to carry the torch of science and exploration forward into the rest of the universe.

He relates a morally equivalent[citation needed] scenario in which extraterrestrial intelligences visit the earth three billion years ago and discover two domains of life living there, one domain which is older but simpler and contemporarily dominant, but which upon closer study appears to be incapable of much further evolutionary development; and one younger domain which is struggling to survive, but which upon further study displays the potential to evolve into all the varieties of life existing on the Earth today, including humanity, and then queries the reader as to whether they would feel ethically compelled to destroy the dominant domain of life to ensure the survival of the younger one, or to destroy the younger one in order to ensure the survival of the older and more populous domain which was "there first". He states that he believes that, like himself, most of the public would feel torn or at least ambivalent about the outcome of artilects at first, but that as the technology advances, the issue would be forced and most would feel compelled to choose a side, and that as such the public consciousness of the coming issue should be raised now so that society can choose, hopefully before the factions becomes irreconcilably polarised, which outcome it prefers.

He also predicts a third group that will emerge between the two. He refers to this third party as Cyborgians or Cyborgs, because they will not be opposed to artilects as such, but desire to become artilects themselves by adding components to their own human brains, rather than falling into obsolescence. They will seek to become artilects by gradually merging themselves with machines and think that the dichotomy between the Cosmists and Terrans can be avoided because all human beings would become artilects.[11]
The transhumanist movement are usually identified as Cyborgians.[citation needed]

His concept of the Cyborgians might have stemmed from a conversation with Kevin Warwick: in 2000, de Garis noted, "Just out of curiosity, I asked Kevin Warwick whether he was a Terran or a Cosmist. He said he was against the idea of artilects being built (i.e., he is Terran). I was surprised, and felt a shiver go up my spine. That moment reminded me of a biography of Lenin that I had read in my 20s in which the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks first started debating the future government of Russia. What began as an intellectual difference ended up as a Russian Civil War after 1917 between the white and the red Russians".[13]

Misogyny and anti-semitism

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In recent years, de Garis has become vocal in the Masculist and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) movements.[14][15] He is a believer in anti-semitic conspiracy theories and has written (and presented on YouTube[16]) a series[17][18] of essays[19] on the subject. Because of the danger of generalized anti-semitism (as manifested in Nazi Germany from 1932 to 1945), de Garis is not opposed to "all Jews," just those whom he denotes as "massively evil" (ME) or "ME Jews," which he claims are "a small subset of overall Jews who have sought totalitarian power," much as the Nazis were a small subset of "overall Germans who had attained totalitarian power," and one does not properly call "anti-Nazi conspiracy theorists" by the name "anti-German conspiracy theorists."[19]

Writings

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  • de Garis, Hugo (28 February 2005). The Artilect War: Cosmists vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines. ETC Publications. p. 254. ISBN 978-0-88280-153-7.
  • de Garis, Hugo (18 March 2010). Multis and Monos : What the Multicultured Can Teach the Monocultured : Towards the Creation of a Global State. ETC Publications. p. 514. ISBN 978-0-88280-162-9.
  • de Garis, Hugo (November 2010). Artificial Brains : An Evolved Neural Net Module Approach. World Scientific. p. 400. ISBN 978-981-4304-28-3.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Hugo de Garis (1996). "CAM-BRAIN: The Evolutionary Engineering of a Billion Neuron Artificial Brain by 2001 Which Grows Evolves at Electronic Speeds Inside a Cellular Automata Machine (CAM)" (PDF). Towards Evolvable Hardware; the Evolutionary Engineering Approach: 76–98. one could use planetoid size asteroids to build huge 3D brain like computers containing ten to power 40 components with one bit per atom. Hence late into the 21st century, the author predicts that human beings will be confronted with the "artilect" (artificial intellect) with a brain vastly superior to the human brain with its pitiful trillion neurons.
  2. ^ Coale, Kristi (28 August 1997). "The Architect of Man's Demise". WIRED. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
  3. ^ BBC News (7 January 1999). "Best brain boosts artificial life". Retrieved 5 January 2010.
  4. ^ "HIP World Wide Web Server". Archived from the original on 6 July 2006. The project of ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories (ATR-HIP) was closed on 28 February 2001
  5. ^ Hugo de Garis; Michael Korkin (2002). "The CAM-Brain Machine (CBM): an FPGA-based hardware tool that evolves a 1000 neuron-net circuit module in seconds and updates a 75 million neuron artificial brain for real-time robot control" (PDF). Neurocomputing. 42 (1–4): 35–68. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.29.400. doi:10.1016/S0925-2312(01)00593-8.
  6. ^ The China-Brain Project : Building China's Artificial Brain using an Evolved Neural Net Module Approach (PDF), Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute, 2008, archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016, Prof. Hugo de Garis has recently received a 3 million RMB, 4-year grant to build China's first artificial brain, starting in 2008
  7. ^ "Welcome to Engineering Letters (IAENG)". Engineering Letters. Retrieved 1 March 2025.
  8. ^ "CITE2010_OrganizingCommittee Information". Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 29 December 2010.
  9. ^ a b c Hugo de Garis (2005). The Artilect War: Cosmists Vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines. Palm Springs, CA: ETC Publications. ISBN 978-0-88280-154-4.
  10. ^ "Machines Like Us interviews: Hugo de Garis". 3 September 2007. Archived from the original on 7 October 2007. gigadeath – the characteristic number of people that would be killed in any major late 21st century war, if one extrapolates up the graph of the number of people killed in major wars over the past 2 centuries
  11. ^ a b Garis, Hugo de. "The Artilect War - Cosmists vs. Terrans" (PDF). agi-conf.org. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
  12. ^ Chris Malcolm (2000). "Why Robots Won't Rule the World". Archived from the original on 22 July 2010.
  13. ^ a b Hugo de Garis (2002). "First shot in Artilect war fired". Archived from the original on 17 October 2007.
  14. ^ "Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis is creating Masculist MGTOW Flyers (Short Essays, Written, Spoken, Videoed)".
  15. ^ "Profhugodegaris (@profhugodegaris)".
  16. ^ "100 Best Hugo de Garis Videos | Meta-Guide.com". meta-guide.com.
  17. ^ "The "MJP"" (PDF). profhugodegaris.files.wordpress.com. 2011. Retrieved 20 August 2020.
  18. ^ "The Clashing Agendas of the Jewish Banksters and the Mgtow/Masculists". 23 March 2016.
  19. ^ a b "HUGO de GARIS on the (ME) Jewish Banking Network".
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