Futorology- Technological Singularity

Futurology post about Technological Singularity

-Attila  04/09/2014

Lets start off with a nice easy post about Technological Singularity. Nothing too heavy right?

In short, to win or lose readers, heres the first line from the Wiki page:
'The technological singularity, or simply the singularity, is the hypothesis that accelerating progress in technologies such as artificial intelligence will cause non-human intelligence to exceed human intelligence for the first time in history, causing human civilization to be radically changed or possibly destroyed '.

Here's a graph showing the idea.

The singularity is the name given to the point in time where artificial intelligence comes to equal human intelligence. At that point, a lot of things will change.

Our growth in intellectual power grows very slowly. Artificial intelligence however grows very rapidly. There will be a point in the near future, where artificial intelligence will reach the level of humans. Computers can run calculations and stuff better than us, but they dont know what theyre doing. The fear is when we start developing serious self-learning programs. The idea is that when a sophisticated enough program has been written, it will better itself. It will re-write its own code to fix any problems,and to expand its capabilities. In theory, it will keep going and going getting better and better, learning new things until it is shut down.

To some people this is amazing. It means we can have artificial intelligence doing things way faster than us. Developing cures for cancer, analysing data, inventing new technologies, new uses for existing technology. The whole lot.

But then theres the other side of it. The skeptics who fear there beign a being more intelligent than us on the earth. There are a few ideas of how singularity may happen, and what could occur when it does. It's all pretty crazy stuff that is hard to think about for too long.

Theres two main ways people think it will happen:

One is someone writing a piece of software that is self-fixing. It will progress itself until it runs out of computing power. It will have so many parallel operations going on, that it will use huge amounts of computing power. Imagine giant pieces of software for each emotion, all beign controlled by crazy rules and formulae on how to interact with any input etc. It gets busy. But if the software can write itself, then we dont have to understand. This idea takes form with a so-called intelligence explosion. It would likely lead to superintelligent artificial minds very quickly, that would surpass human intelligence  and go way beyond instantly.

The second form that is suggested, is through brain-computer interfaces. Think cyborgs. If we get to the point where we understand the brain well enough that we can completely model its neuron interactions, then we can essentially download a complete brain, as it is, including your so-called 'soul' onto a hard drive. Then we can turn you into a robot :) Or bring you back when you die by putting you into a new body that we grow. Crazy stuff.

The truth is, the programming scenario could potentially happen a lot sooner than the biological scenario.
I guess they are kind of different. Since one has created a new creature, and the other has simply given us the ability for our brains to live forever. Immortality vs. the matrix scenario.


There was a movie out recently- Transcendence.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2209764/
 This movie was based on the concept of singularity. It kind of brought the two ideas together as one. There was a guy researching downloading his brain into a megacomputer which was a sentient being and could write its own code. He became the face of this megacomputer, and got his wife to give him more computing power so he could keep growing and getting smarter. It got to the point where he had a zillion computers in the desert running his brain and he was taking over the world. He had gathered all the intelligence of the entire world and gone further, developing some medication thing that linked you to him somehow. It made you immortal, as you could grow back limbs etc. They became his computer minions, taking care of his supercomputer desert and expanding it further.

Interesting movie. If singularity strikes you as interesting I suggest you watch it. Not a great movie in terms of plot and stuff, but if the content strikes you as interesting you will get something out of it. I think there might be some nip in it too!