Dr Hugo de Garis is an Australian retired artificial intelligence researcher, born in Sydney in 1947, known for his work on evolvable hardware and attempts to build artificial brains in Japan, the United States and China. He is the author of The Artilect War (2005), which predicts a bitter conflict over whether humanity should build godlike, massively intelligent machines.
Brian Rose has interviewed de Garis three times on London Real, in May 2023, October 2023 and November 2024. They have talked about what he calls species dominance, the split he expects between Cosmists who want to build artilects and Terrans who want to stop them, ChatGPT, robots, AI unemployment and global government.
Every interview is listed below in order, with a short summary of each.
The Truth About AI: Artificial Intelligence Will Become Dangerous Godlike Machines (May 2023). His first appearance and the clearest introduction to artilects and the species dominance debate. For his most developed argument, watch Countdown To Extinction (2024).
De Garis uses the word artilect, short for artificial intellect, for future machines that would be vastly more intelligent than humans. He argues that the physics of computation allows such machines to exist and that they will eventually be built.
His central prediction is that humanity will split into Cosmists, who want to build artilects, and Terrans, who want to stop them. Speaking in October 2023, he said the war will be between these two human groups rather than between humans and machines.
He argues that the defining question of this century will be whether humans remain the dominant species, and that some people will accept becoming number two to machines while others will fight it.
In 2023 he told Brian Rose that the arrival of ChatGPT had shortened his own timeline for advanced AI. He describes the possible conflict as a gigadeath war.
Hugo de Garis is an Australian retired AI researcher, born in Sydney in 1947, who worked on evolvable hardware and artificial brains in Japan, the United States and China. He is the author of The Artilect War.
Across three interviews with Brian Rose in 2023 and 2024, de Garis talked about artilects, species dominance, the Cosmist and Terran divide, ChatGPT, robots, AI unemployment and global government.
Start with The Truth About AI from May 2023, his first appearance. Then watch Countdown To Extinction from November 2024 for his most developed argument.
Three times: in May 2023, October 2023 and November 2024.
Artilect is Hugo de Garis’s term for an artificial intellect, a future machine with intelligence far beyond that of humans. He argues that whether to build them will become the biggest political question of the century.
The Artilect War, published in 2005, argues that humanity will divide bitterly over whether to build godlike, massively intelligent machines, and that the conflict could become a war with billions of deaths.
He argues that it could, either through conflict between humans over whether to build advanced AI or through the machines themselves.
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