Exponential Growth of Technology and the Singularity

[peledre]

First coined by Verner Vinge in the early 90s is the idea that because of exponential growth, society will at some point in the surprisingly near future reach a level of technology so incomprehensible to us that we have no other way of describing it other than as a Singularity.

Ray Kurzweil has also for decades now been (pretty accurately) forecasting the exponential growth of information technologies and computing, and has also popularized the notion of a Singularity along with the development of Strong-AI as our computing power surpasses the collective intelligence of humanity.

I think it's pretty clear from the data over the last 70 years that information technologies are growing at exponential rates, but extrapolating current trends into future developments is a dangerous game. However, we've been through many different processing mediums (mechanical calculators, vacuum tubes, integrated circuits, etc..) before so I don't see an end to Moore's Law anytime soon. Within 10-20 years we'll be able to do some pretty astounding things, if current trends continue.

[chappachula]

over the last 70 years information technologies are growing at exponential rates... so I don't see an end to Moore's Law anytime soon. Within 10-20 years we'll be able to do some pretty astounding things, if current trends continue.

The internet is amazing.
Facebook is not.


okay, so in 70 years we went from horse-and-buggy to the internet. That's amazing... But so what?
We also went from outhouses to flush toilets.And that's even more amazing...
But have you noticed that today's bathrooms arent any better than the 1950's ?. We never reached a "Singularity" in toilet technology.

The next 10-20 years are going to be like the last 10 years. We went all the way from..... Geocities to..... Myspace and then -gasp- to..... Facebook. It aint quite as astounding as it seems.

Amazon dot com is doing great business...but so is Barnes and Nobles with brick-and-mortar stores. In the next 20 years, we'll have more Kindles and fewer books. But that's not as life-changing as a flush toilet. I can live with or without a Kindle.

[peledre]

We also went from outhouses to flush toilets.And that's even more amazing...
But have you noticed that today's bathrooms arent any better than the 1950's ?. We never reached a "Singularity" in toilet technology.


Plumbing is not an information technology.

[enigmatic]

I've read Kurzweil's stuff and my reaction is probably best broken down as follows.

1)The guy is nuttier than a fruitcake and insanely optimistic. He's not nearly as knowledgeable about biology as he is about IT.

2)He is seriously underestimating the regulatory and social factors that will be involved in the whole transhuman thing.

3)That said, I'm not entirely sure he's wrong and even then it's more a case of time frame than an expectation that this technology will not arrive.

4)Whilst social attitude to radical biological technology is about to become very important, the important thing to remember is that it's not going to just hinge on the North American and European opinion.

5)It's quite a long time since his last book and if anything his time table is ahead of schedule (have you checked the new brain implant research stuff :eek:).

6)Military research into cybernetics may become incredibly important given that (a)it has historically been possible to get away with less regulatory oversight when experimenting on troops. (b)We have lots of serviceman who are in need of prostheses. (c) cybernetic limbs controlled via brain implants have way more serious long term implications than artificial arms and legs

6)We need to be taking this stuff way more seriously than we are doing, some of the research that is proceeding right now really needs some serious (but sensible) ethical and legislative oversight. However our current lawmakers have demonstrated that they can't be trusted to take a balanced and reasonable approach to scientific issues so we really shouldn't expect the scientific community to fall over itself to bring this matter to their attention.

[GIGObuster]

Well, I have noticed a lot of what you are mentionning, but I do not see a good debate here, what is your concern peledre? Or are you asking us what we should expect?

A good starting point should be what do you expect that growth or singularity will do to an specific subject.

[Cheshire Human]

Information technology is like all other technologies. They start out slowly, as people first learn how to do it. They have a rapid growth phase that closely resembles exponential,as people learn how to do it well, then there is a slowing as the last bit of efficiency is squeezed out. Look at cars, for "mature" example. My 2000 car is 10 years old, but is only a tiny bit more "primitive" than a new 2010. There probably hasn't been massive year-to-year change in cars since the 80s. Computers haven't reached the slowdown phase yet, but you can count on it happening, probably within the next 50 years.

[peledre]

Well, I have noticed a lot of what you are mentionning, but I do not see a good debate here, what is your concern peledre? Or are you asking us what we should expect?

A good starting point should be what do you expect that growth or singularity will do to an specific subject.

I don't have a concern per se. I think we can all agree from the data that up to now, information technology has experienced exponential growth. I think where the debate lies is whether or not that will continue indefinitely.

[peledre]

I've read Kurzweil's stuff and my reaction is probably best broken down as follows.

1)The guy is nuttier than a fruitcake and insanely optimistic. He's not nearly as knowledgeable about biology as he is about IT.

He does hope to one day re-animate his father, so I guess the fruitcake thing isn't far off :D.


2)He is seriously underestimating the regulatory and social factors that will be involved in the whole transhuman thing.

I would disagree with you here, we've had pacemakers for decades. There are Parkinson's patients with small computers in their heads replacing neuronal function from dead cells, deaf people have cochlear implants, and we're just starting to do stuff with the visual cortex to give blind people some level of vision. In many cases technologies that were initially developed to aid handicapped will be co-opted by the healthy to improve functions.

4)Whilst social attitude to radical biological technology is about to become very important, the important thing to remember is that it's not going to just hinge on the North American and European opinion.

True


5)It's quite a long time since his last book and if anything his time table is ahead of schedule (have you checked the new brain implant research stuff :eek:).

His next book is on building an intelligent computer by reverse engineering the human brain IIRC.


6)Military research into cybernetics may become incredibly important given that (a)it has historically been possible to get away with less regulatory oversight when experimenting on troops. (b)We have lots of serviceman who are in need of prostheses. (c) cybernetic limbs controlled via brain implants have way more serious long term implications than artificial arms and legs

DARPA is funding many such projects.



6)We need to be taking this stuff way more seriously than we are doing, some of the research that is proceeding right now really needs some serious (but sensible) ethical and legislative oversight. However our current lawmakers have demonstrated that they can't be trusted to take a balanced and reasonable approach to scientific issues so we really shouldn't expect the scientific community to fall over itself to bring this matter to their attention.

Agreed.

[Voyager]

Today we are considerably further along in interacting with our technology than was forecast in just about any sf book or story I read as a kid. Look at the number of people glued to their phones. The universal encyclopedia predicted by Clarke and others is here. Watson, a computer who does a good job playing Jeopardy, got trained by trawling the web. Some personality simulators answer questions by going to the web. But we're still pretty much the same.

I think that when we become transhuman we'll never even realize it.

[Sunspace]

The big never-questioned assuption underlying all these Singularity scenarios is that energy edit: resources will continue to be plentiful. That's not necessarily the case.

[peledre]

The big never-questioned assuption underlying all these Singularity scenarios is that energy will continue to be plentiful. That's not necessarily the case.

What? You're kidding right? I mean your name is Sunspace, you must be kidding.

[peledre]

Today we are considerably further along in interacting with our technology than was forecast in just about any sf book or story I read as a kid. Look at the number of people glued to their phones. The universal encyclopedia predicted by Clarke and others is here. Watson, a computer who does a good job playing Jeopardy, got trained by trawling the web. Some personality simulators answer questions by going to the web. But we're still pretty much the same.

I think that when we become transhuman we'll never even realize it.

I don't think a lot of people even stop and think for a moment that they probably have a device in their pocket which allows them to access the sum total of all human knowledge. It's pretty incredible really.

[Sunspace]

What? You're kidding right? I mean your name is Sunspace, you must be kidding.I can easily imagine a mismanaged future where we miss the chance to transition to a singularity-type future because of a combination of accident and conflict. Or a slightly-different scenario where a small minority transitions, climbing upwards on the resources of their abandoned and left-behind compatriots. The scenario I want, where the world advances into the Singularity maximizing opportunity for all, seems least likely. But unless we get into space and start using the resources there, we won't make it. An exponential increase of resource use can't continue forever in a finite planet. (An exponential increase in complexity, rather than bulk usage, will last quite a bit longer though.)

[peledre]

I can easily imagine a mismanaged future where we miss the chance to transition to a singularity-type future because of a combination of accident and conflict. Or a slightly-different scenario where a small minority transitions, climbing upwards on the resources of their abandoned and left-behind compatriots. The scenario I want, where the world advances into the Singularity maximizing opportunity for all, seems least likely. But unless we get into space and start using the resources there, we won't make it. An exponential increase of resource use can't continue forever in a finite planet. (An exponential increase in complexity, rather than bulk usage, will last quite a bit longer though.)

OK, I guess we're on the same page then, except for perhaps the likelihood of the scenario. As for a Haves and Have-nots society developing, I don't rate that as highly likely, given that most technologies come down in price as they're adopted.

[billfish678]

I don't think a lot of people even stop and think for a moment that they probably have a device in their pocket which allows them to access the sum total of all human knowledge. It's pretty incredible really.

While that is way cool when you think about it, IMO it is somewhat misleading when it comes to this singularity business.

First, assuming having lots of info ALWAYS allows even more info to be created is probably not true.

And even if it IS, that new info inherently being useful to continue the process at an ever greater rate isnt IMO a given either. It might be now, but it might NOT be in the future.

[peledre]

While that is way cool when you think about it, IMO it is somewhat misleading when it comes to this singularity business.

First, assuming having lots of info ALWAYS allows even more info to be created is probably not true.

And even if it IS, that new info inherently being useful to continue the process at an ever greater rate isnt IMO a given either. It might be now, but it might NOT be in the future.

I don't think exponential technologic growth is an accident, it's part of evolution.

Once we develop one level of technology, utilizing that level of technology allows us to develop the next level faster and cheaper, and so on and so on, this is the primary driver of exponential growth trends in technology.

[Wesley Clark]

Exponential trends in and of themselves don't mean much IMO. The playstation 3 is more powerful than the most powerful supercomputers on earth in 1991, but it is used to simulate game graphics. So computing power will keep getting better, but a good deal will just go to things like graphics.

At the same time, there is a limit on how much people need. I know with broadband back in 1999 I had about 4Mbps cable lines and that was fine. As of 2010 I have a 3Mbps DSL and that is fine too. I have never felt any urge to go higher than 2-5Mbps broadband. So consumer market factors also play a role in these technologies. People aren't going to keep buying faster and faster computers just to check their email or run more graphics intensive versions of windows (tons of people still miss XP and want that over Vista and 7). So market forces could slow down some of the innovation.

Kurzweil also ignores social and personal boundary issues. He claimed by 2010 we would have all pervasive broadband and we would have images displayed directly on our retinas. The broadband part is true (if you have a 3G phone), but most people prefer watching videos on a phone over having an image put directly on the retina. Things like invasive nanobots and people having billions of nanobots installed in their brains might not work out since so many people would be wary about putting something so new and vulnerable to cyber attacks in their body. I get tons of spam email, viruses and trojan horses on my laptop, I'm not putting one in my brain.

But I do think a singularity type event will happen. however it'll probably be in stages. Once we find ways to augment or create artificial versions of the cognitive capacity for innovation, problem solving, pattern recognition, then our advances will come even quicker. But I don't think it'll be a night/day switch, more of a steady progression.

I don't know what Kurzweil's evidence is for a doubling of scientific innovation every 10 years. I assume that is true though (more scientists, better diagnostic tools, more literature to base new ideas on, more funding for education, a wealthier third world, etc).

[peledre]

At the same time, there is a limit on how much people need.

No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer. - Bill Gates

I think the whole point of the singularity is that we can't even imagine what we'll need.

[billfish678]

I don't think exponential technologic growth is an accident, it's part of evolution.

Once we develop one level of technology, utilizing that level of technology allows us to develop the next level faster and cheaper, and so on and so on, this is the primary driver of exponential growth trends in technology.

You've totally missed the point I was making. I don't know how else to put it though so your on your own.

[peledre]

You've totally missed the point I was making. I don't know how else to put it though so your on your own.

What natural barriers to you see preventing the trends from continuing?

[smiling bandit]

No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer. - Bill Gates

I think the whole point of the singularity is that we can't even imagine what we'll need.

First off, that quote is probably false and you didn't even quote the fake quote right!

Second off, technology is not increasing exponentially. IT is certainly not doing today, and I'm hard pressed to think of anything which is. It's simply that we get better at, but the improvement is always a decision made at the margins. We see things improving on the surface and look 10 times better there, but often miss that the hardware underneath isn't changing so much. The heyday of computer improvement is probably over: the era of improved user interfaces is not.

Likewise, I'm hopeful about biology improving our lives, too... but Kurzweill seems to have fallen in love with his sci-fi.

[peledre]

First off, that quote is probably false and you didn't even quote the fake quote right!


My bad I probably should've sourced it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704039704574616401913653862.html

[peledre]

Second off, technology is not increasing exponentially. IT is certainly not doing today, and I'm hard pressed to think of anything which is. It's simply that we get better at, but the improvement is always a decision made at the margins. We see things improving on the surface and look 10 times better there, but often miss that the hardware underneath isn't changing so much. The heyday of computer improvement is probably over: the era of improved user interfaces is not.


The hardware underneath isn't changing?

In the last 100 years we've gone from mechanical calculators to relays to vacuum tubes to transistors to integrated circuits. We've got a few more years left with the latter before moving on to the next paradigm.

[Wesley Clark]

No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer. - Bill Gates

I think the whole point of the singularity is that we can't even imagine what we'll need.

I agree, new uses and new concepts are constantly coming up. However I am using the same amount of broadband I was using 11 years ago (I've had different providers since I've moved around) since I have never had any reason to increase my broadband download speeds. It seems more and more of the advances in computing is being used to make better graphics which really isn't that important to a lot of people.

I can get more than enough podcasts, videos, documents and songs on a 16GB mp3 player. I have considered a 32GB model, but don't really need one right now. If I do need one I will get the 32GB model. But right now 16GB is fine.

My first MP3 player was 128MB. That was too small. The next one was 1GB. That was ok, but still too small. My next one was 6GB. That was decent and functioned well. My current 16GB one is even better, but I don't see why I'd need 120GB like some of the models have. The newest Ipod touch is supposed to go up to 128GB of flash drive storage. The next model might be 256GB, then 512GB. However for many of us using more than 30GB really isn't necessary. I put 4 seasons of a TV show on someone's MP3 player and it only took 10GB because I compressed them down. You can store a lot of data in 30GB, 1GB is 250 songs or it can be 3-4 hours of video. I don't need a doubling of the GB in my personal storage devices each year.

The point is consumer demand has to drive some of these exponential trends. And many consumers don't need exponential storage space, processing power, broadband, etc. Lots of people get by fine with 5 year old computers and basic broadband.

Until someone comes up with uses for all these exponential powers of computing, there won't be that big of a market to keep inventing them.

[Voyager]

Second off, technology is not increasing exponentially. IT is certainly not doing today, and I'm hard pressed to think of anything which is. It's simply that we get better at, but the improvement is always a decision made at the margins. We see things improving on the surface and look 10 times better there, but often miss that the hardware underneath isn't changing so much. The heyday of computer improvement is probably over: the era of improved user interfaces is not.


Is technology increasing exponentially? It is and it isn't. Transistor sizes and such are still on a more or less exponential curve, moderated a bit by the fact that only a few companies can afford new fabs. However, the complexity and speed of your average microprocessor core hasn't changed much for a while, with the extra transistors you get on a die going into cache and multiple cores. All the real advances are going into things like smart phones, because we've gotten stuff small enough to get good functionality into a reasonably sized phone. The processors inside these phones are nothing special, since power consumption is so important.

Software, which is what people see, doesn't grow exponentially - though things like apps markets make make it seem like it does. User interfaces will mature when they disappear - unless you consider speech a user interface.

[msmith537]

We will never actually reach this "singularity". The reason is that the singularity is always from the perspective of current technological advancement. As we make new discoveries, our predictions for the future will change and it will continue to recede away from us.

[BrainGlutton]

Earlier thread on the Singularity. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=559690)

And from the TVTropes page: (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSingularity)

"As I see it, the main problem in designing a plausible 23rd century these days isn't lack of grandeur, it's the imminence of changes so fundamental and unpredictable, they're likely to make the dramas of 2298 as unintelligible to us as the Microsoft Anti-Trust Suit would be to Joan of Arc."

— Justin B. Rye

Singularity is the theoretical point in technological development beyond which predictions are virtually impossible, and more to the point, the nature of human life and even the concept of intellect may change completely. Maybe we become godlike: all-knowing and omnipotent. Alternately we become uncomprehending onlookers ... or slip under the tread of gods.

In mathematics and physics, a singularity is a point at which rules break down, and things become undefined. Loosely speaking, it's a point where the rules change. Some extrapolate developments in information technology and automated manufacture accelerating toward a point where humans no longer understand the information, the technology, or even what is being manufactured, even though computation extends the power of human intelligence. Extended people use automated manufacturing to create faster, better versions of both machines and people: an accelerating virtuous circle.

The ultimate consequences are either utopian or dystopian. Some writers are hopeful, and look to improvements: an end to death, scarcity, and the errors of ignorance and stupidity. There is the prospect of self-editing, mental and physical: people finally able to be whatever they wish to be. A singularity can be transcendent; we hack the cracked walls of reality itself and move on to better things. This is an excellent Hand Wave for writers struggling with the impossibility of plots involving entities many orders of magnitude greater than themselves or the reader. Others see no end: endless ecstatic ascent.

The less hopeful works point out the dangers. Environmental exhaustion. Our extinction by an uncontrollable creation, intelligent or not. There is the question of who inherits the wonders of acceleration: us or our posthuman descendants? Can we coexist? Charles Stross sometimes envisages a singularity runaway as enjoyable as unchaining Cthulhu on a bad day. The Black Goat knows the answer to Fermi's question. Agent Smith does not like you.

Note is also taken of how hard it is to uninvent something without halting the inventing species and its descendants at all.

The singularity is sometimes called the "rapture of the nerds". There are inevitably spiritual overtones to a singularity. Spirituality deals with transcendence; that which lies beyond the everyday. A singularity opens a door to the transcendent, drawing in interested writers.

[Darryl Lict]

Watson, a computer who does a good job playing Jeopardy, got trained by trawling the web. Some personality simulators answer questions by going to the web.
Thanks for bringing that up. It's a pretty fascinating machine (http://www.research.ibm.com/deepqa/).

[peledre]

I agree, new uses and new concepts are constantly coming up. However I am using the same amount of broadband I was using 11 years ago (I've had different providers since I've moved around) since I have never had any reason to increase my broadband download speeds. It seems more and more of the advances in computing is being used to make better graphics which really isn't that important to a lot of people.

I can get more than enough podcasts, videos, documents and songs on a 16GB mp3 player. I have considered a 32GB model, but don't really need one right now. If I do need one I will get the 32GB model. But right now 16GB is fine.

My first MP3 player was 128MB. That was too small. The next one was 1GB. That was ok, but still too small. My next one was 6GB. That was decent and functioned well. My current 16GB one is even better, but I don't see why I'd need 120GB like some of the models have. The newest Ipod touch is supposed to go up to 128GB of flash drive storage. The next model might be 256GB, then 512GB. However for many of us using more than 30GB really isn't necessary. I put 4 seasons of a TV show on someone's MP3 player and it only took 10GB because I compressed them down. You can store a lot of data in 30GB, 1GB is 250 songs or it can be 3-4 hours of video. I don't need a doubling of the GB in my personal storage devices each year.

The point is consumer demand has to drive some of these exponential trends. And many consumers don't need exponential storage space, processing power, broadband, etc. Lots of people get by fine with 5 year old computers and basic broadband.

Until someone comes up with uses for all these exponential powers of computing, there won't be that big of a market to keep inventing them.

I can see what you're saying, but it's essentially anecdotal.

To give you a couple examples, higher processing power has allowed us to build more powerful sensors like fMRI, CAT scan, etc... These sensors generate huge amounts of data, and the more sensitive they get the more data they output. Astronomers are now using supercomputers to simulate supernovae and other phenomena that require huge amounts of processing power and pretty advanced algorithms. Perhaps we'll one day be able to simulate what goes on inside the event horizon of a black hole.

I think you certainly are correct that market forces are required to drive these exponential trends, but I see plenty of pressure from a variety of areas to continue to push the envelope.

[code_grey]

repeat after me - a machine will not reach human level of intelligence any time soon (many, many decades). When in doubt, reiterate it by way of auto-hypnosis...

And even if it did reach some such point, that machine "intelligence" would quickly find out that there are 6 billion other "intelligences" running around. Lots of them very busy with solving important global problems to build a better future for, well, you know the drill. From the looks of it, the better future is not getting anywhere near through the labor of the above mentioned human intelligences, and the addition of a few machine intelligences will not change that. They don't even have a resume let alone glowing references, so who is going to approve funding for their projects anyway?

Further, note how Kurzweil et al make this wonderful leap from "human level intelligence" to "designing new generation of super machines". There is no shortage of people capable of passing the Turing test but incapable of designing even an old generation bicycle. Chances are that Kurzweil could not teach a typical smart college kid to be the next super computer design genius if his life depended on it - how is he going to teach similar skills to machines?

[Cisco]

I don't think a lot of people even stop and think for a moment that they probably have a device in their pocket which allows them to access the sum total of all human knowledge. It's pretty incredible really.

Thinking the internet contains the sum total of all human knowledge is just jaw-droppingly ignorant, almost to the point of being offensive.

[peledre]

Thinking the internet contains the sum total of all human knowledge is just jaw-droppingly ignorant, almost to the point of being offensive.

What doesn't it contain?

[GIGObuster]

I don't agree with several items brought by the OP, but I have to say that there is a need to comment on some counterpoints mentioned.

repeat after me - a machine will not reach human level of intelligence any time soon (many, many decades). When in doubt, reiterate it by way of auto-hypnosis...
Well, IMHO this is related to the Human IQ controversy of assuming that it is the ultimate or most important reason why one is successful or not, modern researchers take into account that there are different intelligences in humans and so it is with artificial intelligence; there will be many paths to it and so different time lines to get to the machine intelligences.


And even if it did reach some such point, that machine "intelligence" would quickly find out that there are 6 billion other "intelligences" running around. Lots of them very busy with solving important global problems to build a better future for, well, you know the drill. From the looks of it, the better future is not getting anywhere near through the labor of the above mentioned human intelligences, and the addition of a few machine intelligences will not change that.
IMHO this is not the case, humans can be still great at research, but tools like Google are showing results that no human made, a machine did it for you based on your input and even preferences.

From here, it is clear that the next step is to have computers with AI to begin making connections that we humans have missed.

They don't even have a resume let alone glowing references, so who is going to approve funding for their projects anyway?

The reason why I do see humans creating an intelligence that is superior to a human (in some aspects and in our lifetime), is because many human organizations do want and seek a solution to many problems that are still out there. As I think intelligence comes from prediction, not behavior, the machines are bound to improve on their predictions thanks to the added capacity to learn from feedback.

Further, note how Kurzweil et al make this wonderful leap from "human level intelligence" to "designing new generation of super machines". There is no shortage of people capable of passing the Turing test but incapable of designing even an old generation bicycle. Chances are that Kurzweil could not teach a typical smart college kid to be the next super computer design genius if his life depended on it - how is he going to teach similar skills to machines?
Actually there are humans who fail the Turing test but we do not automatically declare them subhuman. :)

As I have read on the subject and followed the history, it is clear that many current researchers are now on the right track by not concentrating just on top down teaching of machines, but letting the machines learn on their own and at their rate. (A rate that can be as fast as lightning.)

[msmith537]

What doesn't it contain?

Oh no! We aren't falling for THAT one!:D

[TriPolar]

repeat after me - a machine will not reach human level of intelligence any time soon (many, many decades). When in doubt, reiterate it by way of auto-hypnosis...


I'm not sure about the 'many,many decades' time frame, but it's not just around the corner either. But while machines need some time to catch up to human level creativity and conceptual level, they already do plenty of computational intensive work that exceeds human capability. The combination of humans and machines may already have created a higher level of intelligence, in some respects.

To the OP though, I'm not sure what is being predicted. An incomprehensible level of complexity? There are plenty of simple things most people can't comprehend, and incredibly complex things people already comprehend. So far, if a machine is doing it, we can comprehend it. The 'singularity' concept sounds like BS. Not for its falsity, but just trying to stick a label on something to make it sound like an important concept. As an example, IMHO, nobody actually understands macro-economics enough to make consistent predictions, but even with a world-widish economic crisis, we are still managing to get by.

I'm sure we will one day reach the point where machines are as intelligent, or more intelligent than humans, if we can get humans to act according to the level of intelligence they should have, before they destroy the planet.

[Chronos]

Quoth msmith537:We will never actually reach this "singularity". The reason is that the singularity is always from the perspective of current technological advancement. As we make new discoveries, our predictions for the future will change and it will continue to recede away from us. Exactly: It's a horizon, not a singularity. Technology (as a whole) really is growing exponentially, and that's precisely why there isn't a singularity: From every point on an exponential growth, it looks like every point on the graph longer ago than a couple of timescales is effectively zero, and within a few timescales in the future things will be mind-bogglingly greater. We think we're living in an exciting time because we're only 30 years away from the singularity, but someone living in any other time in history would have thought exactly the same way. It's like saying that I'm living in a special spot on Earth because the horizon is the same distance away in every direction.

[furt]

What doesn't it contain?The feel of the wind in your face when you climb to the top of your first mountain.

The smell of the ocean.

The beautiful desolation of the boardwalk in winter.

How it feels when my fiancee smiles at me.




You know, the stuff that makes us human.

[Lemur866]

We aren't going to see exponential growth in computer technology. It's true that we're currently in the exponential phase, but the likelihood is that we'll eventually transition into a sigmoid curve. Look at what has happened with processors--the processor wars where faster CPUs appeared every month is over. Nowadays the computer ads barely bother to mention the processor speed. This means a lot less churn, because now the desktop you bought 5 years ago is pretty much just as good as one you can buy today. It used to be that more RAM was a big deal, but nowadays due to architecture limitations you can't use more than 4 GB, so that's topped out. Hard drives are getting smaller with more capacity, so that's still improving tremendously. But how many GBs of memory do you need? If you're storing tons and tons of video you can eat through TBs, but most people aren't doing video editing.

But all this doesn't mean the age of computer improvement is over. It means that now people can concentrate on how to make all this stuff work better. We've finally reached the Model-T Ford era of computing, where all the parts of the package are in place, and now we just have to make them work better. There's still a lot of work making computing cheaper, simpler, more bulletproof, smaller, and easier to use.

In a couple of years a typical computer will be a phone that has a small display and simple input, but can easily communicate with any nearby display or input device. You'll carry your phone around in your pocket, and sit down at a workstation that is just a monitor and keyboard and mouse, and your phone will communicate with them. But note that what you do on your phone won't be that different--you'll websurf, read, and send/receive text, voice, or video communications. It'll be the same experience, just less annoying, like switching from a Model-T that blows a tire every few hundred miles and has a top speed of 45 mph, to a modern Honda Accord. Sure, some people will have the equivalent of sportscars, but the real benefit of the Honda Accord over the Model T isn't that it goes faster or holds more cargo, it's that it's an order of magnitude more reliable, an order of magnitude safer, and an order of magnitude more comfortable. But it still exists just to haul your body from point A to point
B.

As for machine intelligence, well, there aren't any prospects for strong AI any time soon, and we have no reason to hope we'll make any progress. If we do get a strong AI, it will come as a shock. So we could get something tomorrow, but we have no reason to suspect anything tomorrow. But the improvements in weak AI are not to be sneered at. Just Google itself is a huge achievement.

[Frylock]

(have you checked the new brain implant research stuff :eek:).


Which new brain implant research stuff are you talking about?

[chappachula]

I'm sure we will one day reach the point where machines are as intelligent, or more intelligent than humans .


"Both a person and and a computer can win a game of chess.......
But only the person will enjoy it."



(wisdom printed on a cheap paper placemat at a Chinese restaurant)

[Colophon]

The feel of the wind in your face when you climb to the top of your first mountain.

The smell of the ocean.

The beautiful desolation of the boardwalk in winter.

How it feels when my fiancee smiles at me.




You know, the stuff that makes us human.

Pfft. There's an app for that.

[John DiFool]

The feel of the wind in your face when you climb to the top of your first mountain.

The smell of the ocean.

The beautiful desolation of the boardwalk in winter.

How it feels when my fiancee smiles at me.




You know, the stuff that makes us human.

Indeed. I don't understand why everyone is so gaga about becoming the Borg, or a sentient grey goo, or something else bizarre or unpleasant. To name just one thing, they can take my sense of humor away from me when they pry it from my cold dead locked jaws.

[msmith537]

Pfft. There's an app for that.

Not for the Android. At least not for the ones other than furt's smiling wife.:(

[Chronos]

To be clear, I don't claim that computer technology specifically is inherently exponential, but that technology in general is. Any given field of technology eventually gets about as good as it'll ever get, but then new fields of technology emerge to be the cutting edge of development.


As for machine intelligence, well, there aren't any prospects for strong AI any time soon, and we have no reason to hope we'll make any progress. If we do get a strong AI, it will come as a shock. So we could get something tomorrow, but we have no reason to suspect anything tomorrow. But the improvements in weak AI are not to be sneered at. Just Google itself is a huge achievement. Personally, I think that when we do get strong AI (it'll happen eventually; it's just when it'll happen that's up for guessing), it'll be from Google or something like it just gradually getting smarter and smarter until eventually we can't move the goalposts far enough back to exclude it.

[billfish678]

To be clear, I don't claim that computer technology specifically is inherently exponential, but that technology in general is. Any given field of technology eventually gets about as good as it'll ever get, but then new fields of technology emerge to be the cutting edge of development.

.

Yes, but there is an assumption there. That there are a very large number of "fields" of technology to become the new front runner. And not only that, but the newest front runner somehow bootstraps the others even further along and/or itself for that matter.

[Voyager]

What doesn't it contain?

Here is a simple, uncute, example. Those of us of a certain age have noted that for students today, if it isn't on the web it doesn't exist. Not everything has been digitized yet. We are frequently standing up in conferences and pointing out to students and young faculty that their wonderful new idea got tried out 25 years ago.
The danger of your statement is that if you think everything is on the web you won't look off it, and your search will be overly constrained.

[peledre]

Here is a simple, uncute, example. Those of us of a certain age have noted that for students today, if it isn't on the web it doesn't exist. Not everything has been digitized yet. We are frequently standing up in conferences and pointing out to students and young faculty that their wonderful new idea got tried out 25 years ago.
The danger of your statement is that if you think everything is on the web you won't look off it, and your search will be overly constrained.

Things like this:http://oyc.yale.edu/

I think are very important. But I certainly take your point that not everything has made it to the web. However, in general most of human knowledge can be accessed on the web, in the sense of a universal encyclopedia.

[peledre]

The feel of the wind in your face when you climb to the top of your first mountain.

The smell of the ocean.

The beautiful desolation of the boardwalk in winter.

How it feels when my fiancee smiles at me.




You know, the stuff that makes us human.

You're speaking about emotions, which are essentially just electro-chemical reactions in our brain.

[John DiFool]

The qualia associated with said reactions are more than that.

[peledre]

The qualia associated with said reactions are more than that.

Subjective experience is difficult, but I think at some point in the future we'll have good enough VR that we won't be able to tell the difference between it and reality.

[Bytegeist]

... but I think at some point in the future we'll have good enough VR that we won't be able to tell the difference between it and reality.

The pop-up ads will be a dead giveaway.

[Chronos]

I would maintain that anything that inherently can't be put online (like how it feels to fall in love, or whatever) isn't "knowledge" to begin with, or at least not part of "human knowledge".

[Lemur866]

The qualia associated with said reactions are more than that.

Cite?