Hi Futurists,

Blog post with links:
http://www.futuresalon.org/2009/04/the-science-and-technology-of-cooperation-fut\
ure-salon-with-steve-omohundro.html

Finally finalized the date of our next Future Salon event: Friday 22nd of May
please RSVP http://budurl.com/3f8h as always at SAP Labs in Palo Alto.

Steve Omohundro spoke to a couple of people after Zan Gill's excellent Evolving
Collaborative Intelligence Future Salon and revised his talk since. In his own
words: I enjoyed the Future Salon last night! Based on the discussions I had
with people I've decided to emphasize the more near term aspects of cooperation
in my talk. So I wrote yet another abstract (sorry!). It's actually been great
for helping me find the best way of framing the ideas so t hey will be relevant
to the greatest number of people.

Fine tuning for the Future Salon audience is very welcomed. Here his revised
abstract:

The Science and Technology of Cooperation

Steve Omohundro, Ph.D.

A new science of cooperation is arising out of recent research in biology and
economics. Biology once focused on competitive concepts like "Survival of the
Fittest" and "Selfish Genes". More recent work has uncovered powerful forces
that drive the evolution of increasing levels of cooperation. In the history of
life, molecular hypercycles joined into prokaryotic cells which merged into
eukaryotic cells which came together into multi-cellular organisms which formed
hives, tribes, and countries. Many believe that a kind of "global brain" is
currently emerging.

Humanity's success was due to cooperation on an unprecedented scale. And we
could eliminate much waste and human suffering by cooperating even more
effectively. Economics once focused on concepts like "Competitive Markets" but
more recently has begun to study the interaction of cooperation and competition
in complex networks of "co-opetition". Cooperation between two entities can
result if there are synergies in their goals, if they can avoid dysergies, or if
one or both of them is compassionate toward the other. Each new level of
organization creates structures that foster cooperation at lower levels. Human
cooperation arises from Haidt's 5 moral emotions and Kohlberg's 6 stages of
human moral development.

We can use these scientific insights to design new technologies and business
structures that promote cooperation. "Cooperation Engineering" may be applied to
both systems that mediate human interaction and to autonomous systems.
Incentives and protocols can be designed so that it is in each individual's
interest to act cooperatively. Autonomous systems can be designed with
cooperative goals and we can design cooperative social contracts for systems
which weren't necessarily built to be cooperative. To be effective, cooperative
social contracts need to be self-stabilizing and self-enforcing. We discuss
these criteria in several familiar situations. Cooperative incentive design will
help ensure that the smart sensor networks, collaborative decision support, and
smart service systems of the eco-cities of the future work together for the
greater good. We finally consider cooperation between very advanced
intelligent systems. We show that an asymmetry from computational complexity
theory provides a theoretical basis for constructing stable peaceful societies
and ecosystems. We discuss a variety of computational techniques and pathways to
that end.

Steve Omohundro has had a wide-ranging career as a scientist, university
professor, author, software architect, and entrepreneur. He has degrees in
Mathematics and Physics from Stanford and a Ph.D. in Physics from U.C. Berkeley.
He was a professor in the computer science department at the University of
Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and cofounded the Center for Complex Systems
Research. He has been involved with a variety of research laboratories and
startup companies. He published the book "Geometric Perturbation Theory in
Physics", designed the programming languages StarLisp and Sather, wrote the 3D
graphics system for Mathematica, and built systems which learn to read lips,
control robots, and induce grammars. He is founder and president of Self-Aware
Systems which aims to revolutionize computing using semantics and to develop
technology that promotes cooperative human values. His recent research uses
computational economics to provide a unified analysis of co-opetition in
biological, ecological, economic, political, and artificially intelligent
systems. Papers and talks are available at http://selfawaresystems.com/ and
http://steveomohundro.com/

Future Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with light
refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm is the presentation followed by
questions and discussion.

SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross or Cafeteria depending
on number of RSVPs. SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA
94304[map]. Free and open to the public. Please spread the word and invite
others, but be sure to RSVP http://budurl.com/3f8h so we know how many people to
expect.

See you all there, Mark.