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A Cosmist, according to Professor Hugo de Garis at Starlab in Belgium, is an individual who favors building or growing artificial intelligence, and ultimately leaving the planet Earth to the Terrans, e.g. Kevin Warwick, Bill Joy, who oppose this path for humanity. In his essay The Artilect War, De Garis predicts that the factions will war to the death.
De Garis relates that "just out of curiosity, I asked Kevin whether he was a Terran or a Cosmist. He said he was against the idea of artilects being built (i.e. he is Terran). I was surprised, and felt a shiver go up my spine. That moment reminded me of a biography of Lenin that I had read in my 20s in which the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks first started debating the future government of Russia. What began as an intellectual difference ended up as a Russian civil war after 1917 between the white and the red Russians."
Accordingly, the war might be said to have begun at a debate in Zurich on March 22, 2000. Some technologists, such as Bill Joy, Ray Kurzweil, and Hans Moravec; a few physicists; and mathematicians, such as Roger Penrose, have taken positions in this "war".
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