At 81 years old, longtime Victoria resident Gene Miller says the problems facing society right now are unlike anything he’s ever lived through.
“ Probably most alarmingly, everything having to do with environmental impacts and climate change, I’m very concerned about the spreading and growing impact of autocracy. I worry that as robotics expand that people are going to find themselves not only jobless, but work-less,” Miller said.
He’s also concerned about the potential development of artificial general intelligence (AGI), a form of AI that would match and surpass the cognitive abilities of humans.
“ AGI would have self awareness, would be aware of itself in the same way that you and I and the rest of society is aware of itself,” he said. “The implications are stunning and, I think anybody who would say, ‘oh, well, we’ll put controls in place,’ is being horribly naive and dangerously naive.”
Back in the 1970s Gene Miller founded the Victoria arts collective that’s now Open Space, as well as the arts and entertainment publication Monday Magazine. Now he’s working on a new idea, which he calls a centre for the co-design of the future.
“ To some extent it’s a windy and a preposterous name for an organization,” he said. “ But what I want to do is build here in Victoria, a kind of a center or a headquarters…where we have procedural ideas, how to reach out to people, how to share information, how to gather information so we can share it.”
Miller says that “community geography is not community.”
“The fact that everybody lives in the neighborhood or lives in the city does not inherently mean that community is taking place,” he said. “The idea that I’m pursuing is that community means that a relatively small number of people identify a purpose and intention..and dedicate, commit themselves to accomplishing or achieving an outcome.”
He says the centre he’s proposing would aim to help people acheive shared goals.
“It could be boulevard beautification, it could be any of a thousand things.”
“The whole purpose of the center as I see it is to get involved in a communication and a networking process that will champion that idea of community, provide people with whatever information they need, circulate examples, successful examples of what’s happening out there – and I think there’s a lot of success right now – but basically energize people and encourage them to to identify the kind of purpose at that community level.”
Miller says he believes people need to take an active role in their communities to feel like stakeholders.
“ I believe in citizenship. I believe in people being stakeholders. I think that, particularly in this day and age, there’s a need to take personal action. To be to become, or to remain, a citizen and the whole idea of the work of the center is based on that premise.”
“As far as I’m concerned, any existing good idea is implicitly a challenge to you to come up with your own good idea. And the more people who are doing that and sharing their ideas with other people and gathering adherency until a point is reached where 8, 10, 15, 50 people say, ‘let’s go do it.'”
“God knows there isn’t nearly enough human resource directed to solving a wide range of social issues. Or responding to them. I think that’s where opportunity lies, in, returning to your own creativity and imagination or turning to those things rather than simply reading stuff in the paper or hearing about things that other people are doing.”
Miller says he hopes to have the centre operational by the end of the year.
“ 2025 is the building year. I think that if the idea is valid and viable, it will exist and at an operational level by the end of this year.”
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