Hugo de Garis

Brain Child | Discovery Channel Special

Hugo de Garis is a retired researcher in genetic algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing. His background is in theoretical physics. He changed fields to AI primarily due to the urgency and implications of its rapid acceleration following Moore's Law.

De Garis is noted for his his belief that a major war between the supporters and opponents of intelligent machines, resulting in billions of deaths, i.e. “Gigadeath war” is nearly inevitable before the end of the 21^st century. This hypothesis, and the conditions leading up to it, are outlined in his work The Artilect War.

In 2000 de Garis moved from ATR Research Institute in Japan to multidisciplinary, Deep Future research institute Starlab, where he continued work on the CAM-Brain Project with Christopher Altman and Leo de Penning until the lab's closure in 2001.

From Starlab, de Garis moved on to Utah State University for a short time before leading a brain builder group at Wuhan University in China, where he then retired. de Garis maintains collaborations with AI researcher Ben Goertzel, who is based out of Hong Kong.

"Falling out with the transhumanists"

In 2012 an article by de Garis was published on H+ Magazine: "THE SINGHILARITY INSTITUTE: My Falling Out With the Transhumanists" that made the following claims:

• The project to ensure a “human friendly” AI "is a noble goal, but utterly naïve and poorly thought out"
• "Future artilects will be far smarter than human beings and will have their own desires, and goals. They will do what THEY want, and not what stupid humans program them to do"
• "By definition artilects are smarter than humans, so could look at the human programming in their 'DNA equivalent', decide it was moronic and throw it away"
• "Humanity won’t be augmented, it will be drowned"
• "Transhumanists suffer from tunnel vision. They focus on minor extensions of human capacities such as greater intelligence, longer healthier life, bigger memory, faster thinking etc. They tend to ignore the bigger question of 'species dominance' i.e. should humanity build artilects that would be god like in their capacities, utterly eclipsing human capacities."
• "Transhumanists are too childishly optimistic, and refuse to 'bite the bullet.' They do not face up to the big question of whether humanity should build artilects or not and thus risk a gigadeath Artilect war"
• "Perhaps deep in their hearts, the Transhumanists feel the force of the above argument, but find the prospect of a gigadeath Artilect War so horrible that they blot it out of their consciousnesses and pretend that all will be sweetness and light, all very happy, but not very adult."

Men Going Their Own Way

In recent years, De Garis has become vocal in the Masculist and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) movements. He is a believer in anti-semitic conspiracy theories and has written (and presented on YouTube) a series of essays on the subject.

See also

• Criticism of transhumanism
• Christopher Altman
• Starlab
• Walter de Brouwer

External links

• profhugodegaris.wordpress.com
• Hugo de Garis on Wikipedia
• The Artilect War (PDF)