The Singularity

[Mr. Blonde]

Nubblies needs a dedicated Singularity thread.

Some time ago on Nubblies, I responded to a post about Ray Kurzweil (I think it was Repug) in the vein of "Yeah, interesting stuff, but I think he's way too optimistic, though". I had done some minimal research at the time, but with hindsight I see that I basically just wanted to sound smart. I hadn't done enough research in order to properly justify an opinion on the matter.

The point is, I have changed my mind. I have progressively been gaining much interest in the Singularity, and am currently reading Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence and I am realizing more and more that this is probably going to happen eventually (If it already hasn't happened.)


The thing about the Singularity is that it's not just an "interest" right now -- as far as I'm concerned, it's a priority. It was a line from the Singularity Wikipedia article.

The technological singularity, or simply the singularity, is a theoretical moment in time when artificial intelligence will have progressed to the point of a greater-than-human intelligence that will "radically change human civilization, and perhaps even human nature itself."[1] Since the capabilities of such an intelligence may be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the technological singularity is often seen as an occurrence (akin to a gravitational singularity) beyond which—from the perspective of the present—the future course of human history is unpredictable or even unfathomable.

The Singularity is defined differently depending on the source, but overall it seems to revolve around the basic idea of:

Humans create machines that have gained sentience and are more intelligent than their creators. That is to say, a complex organization of matter that we call "biology" has produced a separate complex organization of matter which we call "technology", and the latter is more efficient at data processing and analysis.


By all accounts, at some point during the Singularity...events will no longer be able to be predicted in real time. Beyond this future potentiality, we have machines several orders of magnitude more intelligent than the smartest human being who ever lived creating machine who will create more intelligent machines, and on and on, because -- why not?

Is it possible?
Is it eventual?
Can we stop it?
Should we?
Will we be prepared?
Can we?