User:Emesee/Technological Singularity
The technological singularity is a theoretical point in the future of unprecedented technological progress, caused in part by the ability of machines to improve themselves using artificial intelligence.[1]
Statistician I. J. Good first wrote of an "intelligence explosion", suggesting that if machines could even slightly surpass human intellect, they could improve their own designs in ways unforeseen by their designers, and thus recursively augment themselves into far greater intelligences. The first such improvements might be small, but as the machine became more intelligent it would become better at becoming more intelligent, which could lead to an exponential and quite sudden growth in intelligence.
Vernor Vinge later called this event "the Singularity" as an analogy between the breakdown of modern physics near a gravitational singularity and the drastic change in society he argues would occur following an intelligence explosion. In the 1980s, Vinge popularized the Singularity in lectures, essays, and science fiction. More recently, some prominent technologists such as Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, voiced concern over the potential dangers of Vinge's Singularity (Joy 2000). Following its introduction in Vinge's stories, particularly Marooned in Realtime and A Fire Upon the Deep, the Singularity has also become a common plot element throughout science fiction.
Others, most prominently Ray Kurzweil, define the Singularity as a period of extremely rapid technological progress. Kurzweil argues such an event is implied by a long-term pattern of accelerating change that generalizes Moore's Law to technologies predating the integrated circuit and which he argues will continue to other technologies not yet invented. Critics of Kurzweil's interpretation consider it an example of static analysis, citing particular failures of the predictions of Moore's Law. Others note that proponents of the "singularity" tend to ignore all of the negative impacts of technology, only focusing on the positive effects. The Singularity also draws criticism from anarcho-primitivism and environmentalism advocates.
Mathematician and author Vernor Vinge greatly popularized Good’s notion of an intelligence explosion in the 1980s, calling the creation of the first ultraintelligent machine the Singularity. Vinge first addressed the topic in print in the January 1983 issue of Omni magazine. Vinge (1993) contains the oft-quoted statement, "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended." Vinge refines his estimate of the time scales involved, adding, "I'll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030."
Vinge continues by predicting that superhuman intelligences, however created, will be able to enhance their own minds faster than the humans that created them. “When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress,” Vinge writes, “that progress will be much more rapid.” This feedback loop of self-improving intelligence, he predicts, will cause large amounts of technological progress within a short period of time.
Most proposed methods for creating smarter-than-human or transhuman minds fall into one of two categories: intelligence amplification of human brains and artificial intelligence. The means speculated to produce intelligence augmentation are numerous, and include bio- and genetic engineering, nootropic drugs, AI assistants, direct brain-computer interfaces, and mind transfer.
Despite the numerous speculated means for amplifying human intelligence, non-human artificial intelligence (specifically seed AI) is the most popular option for organizations trying to advance the Singularity, a choice addressed by Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (2002). Hanson (1998) is also skeptical of human intelligence augmentation, writing that once one has exhausted the “low-hanging fruit” of easy methods for increasing human intelligence, further improvements will become increasingly difficult to find.
It is difficult to directly compare silicon-based hardware with neurons. But Berglas (2008) notes that computer speech recognition is approaching human capabilities, and that this capability seems to require 0.01% of the volume of the brain. This analogy suggests that modern computer hardware is within a few orders of magnitude as powerful as the human brain. It is also noted that the entire human genome is only about 750 megabytes of data, of which only 1.5% codes genes, most of which have nothing to do with intelligence. There is also only about 1% difference in the genes of a human and chimpanzee. This suggests that the "software" in the brain we are born with is relatively small—there is simply no storage space for a huge, arbitrary program.
One other factor potentially hastening the Singularity is the ongoing expansion of the community working on it, resulting from the increase in scientific research within developing countries.
Some critics assert that no computer or machine will ever achieve human intelligence while others do not rule out the possibility.[3] Theodore Modis and Jonathan Huebner argue that the rate of technological innovation has not only ceased to rise, but is actually now declining. Smart (2005) criticizes Huebner's analysis. Some evidence for this decline is that the rise in computer clock speeds is slowing, even while Moore's prediction of exponentially increasing circuit density continues to hold.
Others propose that other "singularities" can be found through analysis of trends in world population, world GDP, and other indices. Andrey Korotayev and others argue that historical hyperbolic growth curves can be attributed to feedback loops that ceased to affect global trends in the 1970s, and thus hyperbolic growth should not be expected in the future.
In "The Progress of Computing", William Nordhaus argues that prior to 1940, computers followed the much slower growth of a traditional industrial economy, thus rejecting extrapolations of Moore's Law to 19th century computers. Schmidhuber (2006) suggests differences in memory of recent and distant events create an illusion of accelerating change, and that such phenomena may be responsible for past apocalyptic predictions.
Some anarcho-primitivism and eco-anarchism advocates, such as John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen, see the Singularity as an orgy of machine control, and a loss of free existence outside of civilization. Bell (2002, 2003) expresses a cautionary environmentalist perspective on the Singularity.
A recent study of patents per thousand persons shows that human creativity does not show accelerating returns, but in fact, as suggested by Joseph Tainter in his seminal "The Collapse of Complex Societies[4]" a law of diminishing returns.[citation needed] The number of patents per thousand peaked in the period from 1850–1900 and has been declining since.[citation needed] The growth of complexity eventually becomes self-limiting, and leads to a wide spread "general systems collapse". Thomas Homer Dixon in "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization" shows that the declining energy returns on investment has led to the collapse of civilizations. Jared Diamond in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" also shows that cultures self-limit when they exceed the sustainable carrying capacity of their environment, and the consumption of strategic resources (frequently timber, soils or water) creates a deleterious positive feedback loop that leads eventually to social collapse and technological retrogression.
While discussing the Singularity's growing recognition, Vinge (1993) writes that "it was the science-fiction writers who felt the first concrete impact." In addition to his own short story "Bookworm, Run!", whose protagonist is a chimpanzee with intelligence augmented by a government experiment, he cites Greg Bear's novel Blood Music (1983) as an example of the Singularity in fiction. In William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer, AIs capable of improving their own programs are strictly regulated by special "Turing police" to ensure they never exceed human intelligence, and the plot centers on the efforts of one such AI to circumvent their control. The 1994 novel The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect features an AI that augments itself so quickly as to gain low-level control of all matter in the Universe in a matter of hours. A more malevolent AI achieves similar levels of omnipotence in Harlan Ellison's short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967). William Thomas Quick's novels Dreams of Flesh and Sand (1988), Dreams of Gods and Men (1989), and Singularities (1990) present an account of the transition through the Singularity; in the latter novel, one of the characters states that it is necessary for Mankind's survival that they achieve an integration with the emerging machine intelligences, or it will be crushed under the dominance of the machines—the greatest risk to the survival of a species reaching this point (and alluding to large numbers of other species that either survived or failed this test, although no actual contact with alien species occurs in the novels).
The Singularity is sometimes addressed in fictional works to explain the event's absence. Neal Asher's Gridlinked series features a future where humans living in the Polity are governed by AIs and while some are resentful, most believe that they are far better governors than any human. In the fourth novel, Polity Agent, it is mentioned that the Singularity is far overdue yet most AIs have decided not to partake in it for reasons that only they know. A flashback character in Ken MacLeod's 1998 novel The Cassini Division dismissively refers to the Singularity as "the Rapture for nerds", though the Singularity goes on to happen anyway.
Popular movies in which computers become intelligent and overpower the human race include Colossus: The Forbin Project, the Terminator series, I, Robot, and The Matrix series. The television series Battlestar Galactica also explores these themes. See also List of fictional computers.
Isaac Asimov expressed ideas similar to a post-Kurzweilian Singularity in his short story "The Last Question". Asimov's future envisions a reality where a combination of strong artificial intelligence and post-humans consume the cosmos, during a time Kurzweil describes as when "the universe wakes up", the last of his six stages of cosmic evolution as described in The Singularity is Near. Post-human entities throughout various time periods of the story inquire of the artificial intelligence within the story as to how entropy death will be avoided. The AI responds that it lacks sufficient information to come to a conclusion, until the end of the story when the AI does indeed arrive at a solution, and demonstrates it by re-creating the universe, in godlike speech and fashion, from scratch. Notably, it does so in order to fulfill its duty to answer the humans' question.
St. Edward's University chemist Eamonn Healy discusses accelerating change in the film Waking Life. He divides history into increasingly shorter periods, estimating "two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, a hundred-thousand years for mankind as we know it". He proceeds to human cultural evolution, giving time scales of ten thousand years for agriculture, four hundred years for the scientific revolution, and one hundred fifty years for the industrial revolution. Information is emphasized as providing the basis for the new evolutionary paradigm, with artificial intelligence its culmination. He concludes we will eventually create “neohumans” which will usurp humanity’s present role in scientific and technological progress and allow the exponential trend of accelerating change to continue past the limits of human ability.
Accelerating progress features in some science fiction works, and is a central theme in Charles Stross's Accelerando. Other notable authors that address Singularity-related issues include Karl Schroeder, Greg Egan, Ken MacLeod, David Brin, Iain M. Banks, Neal Stephenson, Tony Ballantyne, Bruce Sterling, Dan Simmons, Damien Broderick, Fredric Brown, Jacek Dukaj, Nagaru Tanigawa and Cory Doctorow. Another relevant work is Warren Ellis’ ongoing comic book series newuniversal.
In the episode "The Turk" of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, John Connor mentions the Singularity. The Terminator franchise is predicated on the concept of a human-designed computer system becoming self-aware and deciding to destroy humankind - eventually it achieves superintelligence.
In the film Screamers - based on Philip K. Dick's short story Second Variety - mankind's own weapons begin to design and assemble themselves. Self replicating machines (here, the screamers) are often considered to be a significant prerequisite "final phase" - almost like a catalyst to the accelerating progress leading to a Singularity. Interestingly, screamers develop to a level where they will kill each other and one even professes her love for the human. This idea is common in Dick's stories, that explore beyond the simplistic "man vs machine" scenario in which our creations consider us a threat.
There is a feature-length documentary called Transcendent Man being made on Ray Kurzweil and his book The Singularity Is Near. The film documents Kurzweil's quest to reveal mankind's destiny.