Technological singularity

Categories: Singularitarianism | Futurology

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When plotted on a logarithmic graph, 15 separate lists of paradigm shifts for key events in human history show an exponential trend. Lists prepared among others by Carl Sagan, Paul D. Boyer, Encyclopedia Britannica, American Museum of Natural History and University of Arizona, compiled by Ray Kurzweil.

In future studies, a technological singularity (also referred to as just the Singularity) is a predicted future event when technological progress and societal change accelerate due to the advent of superhuman intelligence, changing our environment beyond the ability of pre-Singularity humans to comprehend or reliably predict. This event is named by analogy with the breakdown of modern physics knowledge near the gravitational singularity of a black hole.

Such consequences were discussed in the 1960s by I. J. Good, though the first use of the term singularity to describe technological progress was by Stanislaw Ulam in the 1950s. The concept of the Singularity was brought to a much wider audience in the 1980s by Vernor Vinge. It is disputed when or if the Singularity will occur, but futurists most commonly estimate the third decade of the 21st century.

Others, most notably Ray Kurzweil, have proposed theories expanding Moore's law into types of computation beyond normal transistors, suggesting an exponential pattern of technological progress persisting throughout human history and even before the beginning of life on Earth. This pattern, he predicts, culminates in extreme technological progress in the 21st century, leading to the replacement of biological intelligence by more advanced forms of intelligence.

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Early conceptions

Though often thought to have originated in the last two decades of the 20th century, the idea of a technological singularity actually dates back to the 1950s:

"One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue." —Stanislaw Ulam, May 1958, referring to a conversation with John von Neumann

This quote is sometimes taken out of context and attributed to von Neumann himself, likely due to von Neumann's celebrity.

In 1965, statistician I. J. Good described a singularity more similar to today's meaning, in that it emphasized the role of superhuman intelligence:

"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, 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."'
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The Vingean singularity

The concept of a technological singularity as it is known today is due in part to mathematician and novelist Vernor Vinge. Vinge began speaking on the Singularity in the 1980s, and collected his thoughts into the first article on the topic in 1993, with the essay "Technological Singularity". Since then, it has been the subject of many futurist and science fiction stories and writings.

Vinge's essay contains the oft-quoted statement that "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended."

Vinge's singularity is commonly misunderstood to mean technological progress will rise to infinity, as happens in a mathematical singularity. Actually, the term was chosen as a metaphor from physics rather than mathematics: as one approaches the Singularity, models of the future become less reliable, just as conventional models of physics break down as one approaches a gravitational singularity.

Vinge writes that superhuman intelligences, whether created by cybernetically enhancing human minds or through artificial intelligence, will be even more able to enhance their own minds than the human intelligences that created them. "When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress," Vinge writes, "that progress will be much more rapid." This feedback loop of self-improving intelligence is expected to cause large amounts of technological progress within a short period of time.

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Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns

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Kurzweil expansion of Moore's law shows that due to paradigm shifts the underlying trend holds true from integrated circuits to earlier transistors, vacuum tubes, relays and electromechanical computers.

In his 2001 essay, The Law of Accelerating Returns, Ray Kurzweil generalizes Moore's law, which describes an exponential growth pattern in the complexity of integrated semiconductor circuits, to include technologies from far before the integrated circuit to future forms of computation. He believes that the exponential growth of Moore's law will continue beyond the use of integrated circuits into technologies that will lead to the Singularity, which he defines as technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. He declares that whenever a technology approaches some kind of a barrier, a new technology will be invented to cross that barrier. He predicts that such paradigm shifts will become more and more common as we approach the singularity.

Kurzweil's law has in many ways altered public perception of Moore's. It is a common (but mistaken) belief that Moore's law makes predictions regarding all forms of technology, when really it only concerns semiconductor circuits. Many futurists still use the term "Moore's law" to describe ideas like those put forth by Kurzweil.

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Raymond Kurzweil

Kurzweil elaborates on his views in his books The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near. His predictions differ from Vinge's in that he predicts a more gradual ascent to the Singularity involving all of human society, rather than Vinge's rapidly self-improving superhuman intelligence. The distinction is often made with the terms soft and hard takeoff.

According to Kurzweil, since the beginning of evolution, more complex life forms have been evolving exponentially faster, with shorter and shorter intervals between the emergence of radically new life forms, and all of evolution has been leading up to human beings, who have the capacity to engineer (to intentionally design with efficiency), a new trait which replaces relatively blind evolutionary mechanisms of selection for efficiency. By extension, the rate of technical progress amongst humans has also been exponentially increasing, as we discover more effective ways to do things, we also discover more effective ways to learn, i.e. language, numbers, written language, philosophy, scientific method, instruments of observation, tallying devices, mechanical calculators, computers, each of these major advances in our ability to account for information occurring increasingly close together. Already within the past sixty years, life in the industrialized world has changed almost beyond recognition except for living memories from the first half of the 20th century. This pattern culminates in unimaginable technological progress in the 21st century, leading to a singularity and after that, presumably, the replacement of biological life as obsolete in the face of entirely self-engineering intelligences.

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Evolution of society

Main article: Sociocultural evolution

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Mass use of inventions: Years until use by a quarter of US population.

Some view the Singularity as a logical consequence of the evolution of society. Many sociologists and anthropologists have created social theories dealing with social and cultural evolution. Some, like Lewis H. Morgan, Leslie White, and Gerhard Lenski, declare technological progress to be the primary factor driving the development of human civilization.

Morgan's concept of three major stages of social evolution (savagery, barbarism, and civilization) can be divided by technological milestones, like fire, the bow, and pottery in the savage era, domestication of animals, agriculture, and metalworking in the barbarian era and the alphabet and writing in the civilization era.

Instead of specific inventions, White decided that the measure by which to judge the evolution of culture was energy. For White, "the primary function of culture" is to "harness and control energy." White differentiates between five stages of human development: In the first, people use energy of their own muscles. In the second, they use energy of domesticated animals. In the third, they use the energy of plants (agricultural revolution). In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In the fifth, they harness nuclear energy.

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US Patents granted, 1870–2005.

White introduced a formula P=E*T, where E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of efficiency of technical factors utilizing the energy. In his own words, "culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased." The Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev extrapolated this theory to create the Kardashev scale, which categorizes the energy use of advanced civilizations. A Dyson sphere is Type II on this scale, and humanity is currently at about 0.7.

Lenski takes a more modern approach and focuses on information. The more information and knowledge (especially allowing the shaping of natural environment) a given society has, the more advanced it is. He identifies four stages of human development, based on advances in the history of communication. In the first stage, information is passed by genes. In the second, when humans gain sentience, they can learn and pass information by experience. In the third, the humans start using signs and develop logic. In the fourth, they can create symbols, develop language and writing. Advancements in the technology of communication translates into advancements in the economic system and political system, distribution of goods, social inequality and other spheres of social life. He also differentiates societies based on their level of technology, communication and economy: (1) hunters and gatherers, (2) simple agricultural, (3) advanced agricultural, (4) industrial (5) special (like fishing societies).

Finally, from the late 1970s sociologist and anthropologists like Alvin Toffler (author of Future Shock), Daniel Bell and John Naisbitt have approached the theories of postindustrial societies, arguing that the current era of industrial society is coming to an end, and services and information are becoming more important than industry and goods. Some of the more extreme visions of the postindustrial society, especially in fiction, envision the elimination of economic scarcity and are strikingly similar to the visions of near and post-Singularity societies.

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Singularity technologies

Futurists speculate about many technologies possibly significant in bringing about the Singularity. They often dispute the details of their arrival, and of course some may depend on or expedite the invention of others. While many such disputes exist, this section shows some of the most common themes among their predictions.

Some believe artificial intelligence capable of repeated self-modification and improvement, known as a seed AI, if possible, would likely cause a technological singularity. Much of the work of the Singularity Institute is built upon this belief.

The potential dangers of molecular nanotechnology, such as the "grey goo" scenario, are widely known outside of futurist and transhumanist communities, and many Singularitarians consider it to be one of the most significant existential risks facing humanity. For this reason, they often believe that nanotechnology should be preceded by seed AI, and that nanotechnology should remain unavailable to pre-Singularity society. Others, such as the Foresight Institute, advocate efforts to create molecular nanotechnology, believing that nanotechnology can be made safe for pre-Singularity use or can expedite the arrival of a beneficial singularity.

Some believe direct brain-computer interfaces may improve memory, computational capacity, communications, and knowledge bases. Modern human-computer interfaces may also be seen as intelligence augmentations: expert systems, software recognizing and predicting human behavior patterns, speech and handwriting recognition software, etc. Intelligence enhancement through drugs and genetic engineering (beyond that which is provided by modern nootropics) may also soon be possible.

Mind uploading is a proposed alternative means of creating artificial intelligence—instead of programming a new intelligence, one copies an existing human intelligence into a digital form. The advances in scanning technologies, computational power, and neurology needed for mind uploading make it seem unlikely in a pre-Singularity world, however.

George Dyson speculates in Darwin Among the Machines that a sufficiently complex computer network may produce "swarm intelligence". AI researchers may use the improved computing resources of the future to create artificial neural networks so large and powerful they become generally intelligent. Advocates of Friendly AI see this as "brute-forcing" the problem of creating AI, and likely to produce unacceptably immoral and dangerous forms of artificial intelligence.

Singularity speculations often concern the theoretical limits of computation power. Some researchers claim that even without quantum computing, using advanced nanotechnology, matter could be engineered to have unimaginably vast computational capacities. Such material is referred to as computronium among futurists. Some speculate that entire planets or stars may be converted into computronium, creating "Jupiter Brains" and "Matrioshka Brains" respectively.

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Criticisms

Objections to the Singularity usually focus on one of three themes. Some question extrapolations of exponential growth trends to predict future technological advances. Some question the possibility of human-equivalent artificial intelligence—for further discussion see the articles Strong AI and Artificial consciousness. Others, while believing that the Singularity is possible, see it as unsafe, undesirable, or morally objectionable.

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Exponential growth curves and Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns

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A logarithmic plot showing an exponential shortening trend between major events (as chosen by Ray Kurzweil) in human and natural history. Some critics of Kurzweil's theory dispute the choice of such specific events.

Some claim the exponential growth of technological progress may become linear or inflected or may begin to flatten into a limited-growth curve. In this model, instead of an overall acceleration of progress, technological advance jumps forward whenever there is a human "buy in" and stalls whenever there is no benefit large enough to profit the technologists, and therefore never gets steep enough to be considered a singularity.

Examples of large human "buy-ins" into technology include the computer revolution, as well as massive government projects like the Manhattan Project and the Human Genome Project. The foundation organizing the Methuselah Mouse Prize believes aging research could be the subject of such a massive project if substantial progress is made in slowing or reversing cellular aging in mice.

Both Theodore Modis and Jonathan Huebner have argued—each from different perspectives—that the rate of technological innovation has not only ceased to rise, but is actually now declining. The validity of their conclusions has been criticized [1] by John Smart.

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The desirability and safety of the Singularity

It has been often speculated, in science fiction and elsewhere, that advanced AI is likely to have goals inconsistent with those of humanity and may threaten humanity's existence. It is conceivable, if not likely, that superintelligent AI will simply eliminate the intellectually inferior human race, and humans will be powerless to stop it. This is a major issue concerning both Singularity advocates and critics, and was the subject of an article by Bill Joy appearing in Wired Magazine, ominously titled Why the future doesn't need us.

Some argue advanced technologies are simply too dangerous for humans to morally allow them to be built, and advocate efforts to stop their invention. Perhaps the most famous for holding this viewpoint is Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who believed AI may enable the upper classes of society to "simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity". Alternatively, if AI is not created, Kaczynski argues that humans "will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals" after sufficient technological progress has been made. Portions of Kaczynski's writings have been included in both Bill Joy's article and in a recent book by Ray Kurzweil. It should be noted that Kaczynski not only opposes the Singularity but also supports neo-Luddism. Many people oppose the Singularity without opposing present-day technology as Luddites do.

Along with Kaczynski, other anti-civilization theorists like John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen represent the school of anarcho-primitivism or eco-anarchism, which sees the rise of the technological singularity as an orgy of machine control, and a loss of a feral, wild, and uncompromisingly free existence outside of the factory of domestication (civilization). In essence, environmental groups such as the Earth Liberation Front and Earth First! see the singularity as a force to be resisted at all costs. James John Bell has written articles for Earth First! as well as other publications giving warnings about the singularity, including his essays Exploring The "Singularity" and Technotopia and the Death of Nature: Clones, Supercomputers, and Robots. Also, the publication Green Anarchy, of which Kaczynski and Zerzan are regular contributors, has published articles about resistance to the technological singularity, e.g. A Singular Rapture, written by MOSH (which is in reference to Kurzweil's M.O.S.H. Mostly Original Substrate Human).

Just as Luddites opposed artifacts of the industrial revolution, due to concern for their effects on employment, some opponents of the Singularity are also concerned about future employment opportunities. Although Luddite concerns about jobs were not supported given the growth in jobs after the industrial revolution, there was one effect on involuntary employment: namely, a dramatic decrease in child labor and the labors of the overaged. Thus, only a drop in voluntary employment should be of concern, not the level of absolute employment (Such a position is held by Henry Hazlitt). Economically, a post-Singularity society would likely have more wealth than a pre-Singularity society (via increased knowledge of matter and energy manipulation to meet human needs) and thus wealth distribution would be easier to solve. One possible post-Singularity future, therefore, is one in which per capita wealth increases dramatically while per capita employment decreases.

Naturally, scenarios such as those described by Kaczynski are also unappealing to Singularity advocates. Many, however, do not feel they are so likely and are more optimistic about the future of technology. Others believe that, regardless of the dangers the Singularity poses, it is simply unavoidable—we must progress technologically because there is just no other path to take.

Advocates of friendly artificial intelligence acknowledge the Singularity is potentially very dangerous and work to make it safer by creating seed AI that will act benevolently towards humans and eliminate existential risks. This idea is also embodied in Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, which prevent an artificially intelligent robot from acting malevolently towards humans.

Singularity advocates generally postulate that as the Singularity approaches, it goes undetected. Humans, however, are both externally and internally aware of change; therefore the likelihood of such a change going undetected in the environment is small. And the effects? One answer might be societal entropy to the point that the Singularity is impeded from occurring. If it is generally known that the Singularity is being approached—with its unknowns—then learning, investment, and technology enhancement collapse under a weight of uncertainty. Devoid of the next level of technical infusion, the Singularity is never approached, and human society collapses in a deflationary wait for the Big Bang or in a variant of intellectual Cargo Cultism.

Another viewpoint, although a much less common one, is that AI will eventually dominate or destroy the human race, and that this scenario is acceptable. AI researcher Hugo de Garis is most notable for his support of this opinion.

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The Singularity in fiction and modern culture

In addition to the Vernor Vinge stories that pioneered Singularity ideas, several other science fiction authors have written stories that involve the Singularity as a central theme. Notable authors include William Gibson, Charles Stross, Greg Egan, Greg Bear, Iain M. Banks, Neal Stephenson, Damien Broderick, Jacek Dukaj and Cory Doctorow. Ken MacLeod describes the Singularity as "the Rapture for nerds" in his 1998 novel The Cassini Division. Singularity themes are common in cyberpunk novels, one of the most famous examples being the recursively self-improving AI Neuromancer from William Gibson's novel of the same name. Some earlier science fiction works such as Isaac Asimov's The Last Question and John W. Campbell's The Last Evolution also feature technological singularities. A 1994 novel published on Kuro5hin called The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect depicts life after an AI-initiated Singularity.

Orion's Arm, an online science fiction world-building project, also features several technological singularities as part of its premise. The computer game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri also features something akin to a singularity, called the "Ascent to Transcendence", as a major theme within it.

The TV series Odyssey 5's plotline revolves around technological singularity and related technologies as well. The film The Matrix can be described as taking place in a post-Singularity world. A two-part segment of The Animatrix entitled The Second Renaissance portrays the human race engaged in a desperate war with sentient machines following Singularity. An earlier example of technological singularity in the form of computer intelligence is the 1969 film Colossus: The Forbin Project. In the film, the U.S. defense supercomputer Colossus achieves a self-aware state through increasingly complex mathematical formulation. Once Colossus becomes self-aware, it links with its Soviet counterpart, Guardian. Together this new form of intelligence imposes peace on humans unilaterally.

An alternative ending is explored in The Terminator, where the Skynet AI becomes self-aware and decides that the only way to eliminate its enemies is to launch nuclear weapons and exterminate the humans in a Holocaust. The Singularity is also presented in many anime movies and series, such as Akira, Neon Genesis Evangelion, RahXephon and Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040.

If one was to categorize the fiction by Singularity "type", one's list might resemble:

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Organizations

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI, official site) is a nonprofit research think tank and public interest institute for the study and advancement of beneficial artificial intelligence and ethical cognitive enhancement. Since cognitive ability influences how well difficult problems can be solved, they aim to further the safe and significant enhancement of cognition to make contemporary humanitarian challenges generally more solvable. They have the additional goal of fostering a broader discussion and understanding of Friendly Artificial Intelligence. They focus on Friendly AI, as they believe strong AI will enhance cognition before human cognition can be enhanced by neurotechnologies or somatic gene therapy.

The Acceleration Studies Foundation (ASF, official site), an educational nonprofit, was formed to attract broad business, scientific, technological, and humanist interest in acceleration and evolutionary development studies. They produce Accelerating Change, an annual conference on multidisciplinary insights in accelerating technological change at Stanford University, and maintain Acceleration Watch, an educational site discussing accelerating technological change.

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Other prominent voices

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See also

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References

  1. Damien Broderick. The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed by Rapidly Advancing Technologies Forge; 2001. ISBN 0312877811.
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External links

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