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.
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.
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)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.
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.
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.
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.
He does hope to one day re-animate his father, so I guess the fruitcake thing isn’t far off :D.
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.
True
His next book is on building an intelligent computer by reverse engineering the human brain IIRC.
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.
The big never-questioned assuption underlying all these Singularity scenarios is that [del]energy[/del] edit: resources will continue to be plentiful. That’s not necessarily the case.
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.
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.
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.
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).