As we stated in Semi-Immortality, our first goal - discovering all the Game’s rule - as well as our second goal – the indefinite extension of human life-span – cannot be achieved by using just science and technology. Physics, A.I., genetics and all sort of technological tools all have a pivotal role in our quest for the true understanding of Reality; however, as we approach the Singularity, we do feel the need for a certain philosophical attitude towards this development. From an ethical point of view, we are trying to structure our system to build in a rigorous fashion the foundations for our success: being conventionalists, we would like to propose (and not to impose) a particular perspective on ontology, so that the boundaries of things are arbitrary and serve “only” cognitive purposes. On the other hand, we acknowledge that some sort of values are necessary for any kind of decision, namely the somewhat obvious fact that a decision involves a goal and some constraints on the possible courses of action. From a conventionalist point of view, something is right if it brings me closer to my goal, wrong if it brings me farther from it: a so-called “moral principle” is thus a norm we would like to respect to increase the chances we will achieved the desired final state.

Of course, there is an overwhelming variety of possible goals, and it is very hard to claim that some choices are intrinsically better than others. So, the iLabs choice – discovering the fundamental laws of reality – is just as arbitrary as any other: true, it is more interesting and it has more fruitful “side-effects” than most, but is still a convention. The Singularity will bring about radical changes in some of our deepest intuitions and most familiar concepts: the very idea of Self, the “miracles” promise by medicine and nanotechnology, the development of mind uploading – many of the core ideas of today’s society will collapse tomorrow under the pressure of the technological development. That is why we set for ourselves the task (the “duty”) of managing this epic change, by laying down now the foundations of a new society, with a computable law and perfectly fair, unbiased judging procedures. It is in this perspective and to this end that we wrote The Law in the Society of Semi-Immortality.

The relationship between law and technology dates back to the Forties. Norbert Wiener, in his study Cybernetics or control and communication in the animal and the machine, is the first that noticed what improvements could be made if only computer would have been taught to judge. Lee Lovinger, strongly influenced by Wiener’s ideas, founded the field of jurimetrics in 1949. Although many practitioners were at first enthusiast of the new formal framework, for several reasons (mostly technical limits) the field never gained the attention Lovinger was hoping for.

During the Sixties, other studies were devoted to explore the possible application of ideas from cybernetics to the legal system: back in that days, the tag “cybernetics and law” was used to collect statistical information as well as formal studies on legal reasoning. Unfortunately, this line of development never reached results general enough to be interesting, since many particular formal applications were suitable to handle only few, specific cases.

The importance of making a computable version of the current legal system cannot be underestimated: however, it is important to point out that our perspective is much more radical. Instead of slightly modifying existing rules and procedures, our research project wants to produce a brand new law, explicitly designed to be computable. Since the massive use of Artificial Minds will be the only chance we have to structurally improve the current administration of the law, the computability of the principles turns out to be not just desirable, but an absolute formal requirement.

1.0 This agreement is based on truth, that is the correct description of reality.

1.1 Each subscriber is committed to never lie, under any circumstance whatsoever.

1.2 A subscriber violating the point 1.1 would be automatically excluded from the agreement.

The value of Truth – the correct description of reality – is a value shared by many people. The important element of novelty is its position in the hierarchy of moral principles: since it is the first principle, in the society of Semi-Immortality “lying” will be the biggest crime and will be treated accordingly with the biggest punishment, the automatic exclusion from the agreement. Since the long-term goal of the society is the complete understanding of reality, any untrue sentence will bring us farther from the final goal.

It would have been easy to climb a mountain and wait for someone to give us a new law: with little contents and credibility, a new society would have been indeed created – but not the one we was hoping for.

It would have been possible to set up some sort of coup d'etat: some demagogy and a couple of fanatics willing to sacrifice for the cause are often (unfortunately) enough to get huge numbers of people involved – but also this strategy would have not given us the people we were looking for in the first place.

Thirty-three years ago we founded iLabs with the strong conviction that another route was possible, a route requiring patience but not the price of compromises. Luckily enough, we can now say that everything happened more or less as we planned: the technological and scientific developments have been happening at the expected rate, and our own resources have been growing enough to continuously sustain our activities.

In 2007, the publishing of Semi-Immortality marked the beginning of a new iLabs era, and more and more efforts have been made since that first book to share our vision with anyone interested: this book is thus a natural product of our research in the philosophy of law and moral theory. Starting from the perspective known as “conventionalism”, we are now in a position to see that the final “Solution”, the true understanding of the laws of nature, can be achieved. As soon as we approach Singularity, our life-span extension is going to grow exponentially: among the many possible paths to this exciting future, we put forward our principles as the ones more likely to help us managing this revolution.

We have always acknowledged the fundamental role of ethics in our global vision: even if this approach will add conceptual challenges to the already existing ones, we do feel that this is the only viable solution to a desirable Singularity. Our bet is that the possible prize is so huge that it is worth the exceptional efforts required: in any case, if energy and resources have to be somehow spent, we'd better use them on something potentially valuable...

He has a degree in Economics from Bocconi University and he is CEO of Diagramma, a leading company in insurance software applications. Expert in Artificial Intelligence, in 2007 he has co-authored with Antonella Canonico the book Semi-Immortality, a manifesto of European transhumanism.

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She graduated in Philosophy from San Raffaele University, with a dissertation on the ontological foundations of contemporary philosophy of mind and its consequence for ethics and social theory. She is project manager for ethics, social scenarios and politics and responsible for iLabs strategic partnerships.

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He has a Ph.D. and teaches Philosophy of Law, Methodology of Law and Legal Ethics. He is a lawyer and a teacher in several "Scuole degli Ordini Forensi". He is a member of the Italian Society of Philosophy of Law and the International Society for Study of Argumentation.

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