The Singularity

What is the singularity and will you live to see it?*

POSTED 5/6/2018

As artificial intelligence and computing capabilities advance, the date of the technological singularity draws nearer. You probably know about IBM's AI computer "Watson" and you may have seen recent Microsoft commercials on their AI work. Along with lesser known efforts, these industry giants are moving us inexorably towards the singularity. What is the singularity? What will life be like after the singularity? When do futurists predict it will occur? There are ethical questions that need to be answered with every world-changing scientific advance. Besides the existential concerns, AI and other technological and scientific advances are giving humanity the possibility of directing its own evolution - basically deciding what kind of humans we want to become. Let's hope we have the wisdom to think this one through.

What is the singularity?

Science fiction writer Vernor Vinge popularized the concept of the singularity in the 1990's. He described it this way: "It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs till the notion becomes a commonplace. Yet when it finally happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown."

When technologists*** speak of "the singularity", they are speaking specifically of a future technological singularity - one that will be brought about primarily by AI but also other technologies, such as autonomous nanobots and genetic engineering. Vinge pinned the Singularity to the emergence of artificial intelligence. "We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth," he wrote. "The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence."

The Singularity is the next major step beyond the Turing test**. Here are a couple of definitions:

• The singularity is that point in time when all the advances in technology, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI), will lead to machines that are smarter than human beings.

• The term singularity describes the moment when a civilization changes so much that its rules and technologies are incomprehensible to previous generations.

What will life be like after the singularity?

The short answer, obviously, is nobody knows. But futurists, scientists, and science fiction writers have put forward some interesting speculations.

• There will be an intelligence explosion, and machines (robots, computers) will be able to make better machines. A Business Insider article quotes mathematician I. J. Good: "...an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make." This ultraintelligence may be able to answer some of the so far unsolvable questions of astrophysics and to find cures for today's incurable diseases.

• George Mason University economist Robin Hanson says that there have been at least two other singularities in human history — what we now call the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. The next revolution — the technological singularity — would be the postmodern equivalent of those world-historic events...with total economic growth speeding up by 60 to 250 times the current rate. (Business Insider, Dec 18, 2015)

• Bioengineering and nanobots will greatly extend human life by eliminating genetically-caused diseases and constantly repairing our bodies at the cellular and molecular levels.

• An expansive, perhaps all-encompassing, human-machine interface will lead to a vast increase in virtual experiences.

• Robots will become successors to humanity.

The dark side to all this is that some believe the singularity will lead to control of humanity by the super-artificial intelligence (SAI). Or that the SAI will decide that its goals differ from ours. Or that we are irrelevant. Entrepreneur Elon Musk and astrophysicist Steven Hawking, among others, have warned of the existential risk from a super-intelligence, and they have called for strong and effective management of AI developments.

For more speculation, io9.gizmodo offers "7 Totally Unexpected Outcomes That Could Follow the Singularity"

When will the singularity occur?

Ray Kurzweil, Google's Director of Engineering predicts that the technological singularity will occur within the next 30 years. Some such as futurist Ben Goetzel and Masayoshi Son, CEO of Softbank, agree with Kurzweil's time frame. Forbes gives us "3 Reasons To Believe The Singularity Is Near".

Others, such as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen believe that it will be far in the future before we see the singularity. Although Allen bases his argument on the rate of knowledge increase needed for this type of technological advancement, a long time frame could also be the case if we take the Musk and Hawking warnings into account.

There are ethical questions that need to be answered with every world-changing scientific advance. Besides the existential concerns, AI and other advances are giving humanity the possibility of altering its own evolution - basically deciding what kind of humans we want to become. Let's hope we have the wisdom to think this one through.

RJC, 5/6/2018

*Acknowledgement: I've taken the title for this post from an excellent article on the io9.gizmodo website.

**The Turing test is passed when an observer cannot distinguish between the response of a computer and the response of a human being.

***When physicists speak of a singularity they are referring to a point at which a function takes an infinite value, especially in space-time when matter is infinitely dense, as at the center of a black hole. Accepted scientific principles break down in a singularity and we are at a loss to describe the reality.