The Singularity is not what you think

People often ask me for my definition of the technological Singularity.  More specifically, they want me to offer some predictions as to what it will actually look like and what it might mean to them and the human species.

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Complete entry

Posted by cyberbian  on  06/03  at  02:06 AM

You blew the elegant definition when you said:

and 2) the theoretic potential for the rise of recursively self-modifying artificial superintelligence.

The singularity is based purely on the timeline and clusters of significant events coming progressively closer while growing progressively larger.

The principle was as valid 100 years or 1000 years ago as it is today. But 100 years ago, you would not be trying to cram AI into the definition.
If you want to argue for AI, you are backing a looser. The new memristor from IBM has reawakened the potential of neural networking. Which is capable of modeling the working of our brains. AI never could, it dosen't even try.

Why not genetics too? Why not chemistry? Lets not forget nanotech?

No none of these define the singularity.

One thing I can tell you about the singularity which you obviously do not realize, we are going up from inside the singularity.
If you imagine it like a black hole. When we cross the event horizon. The rate of change will be like exploding out of the funnel of a black hole and into the universe. That is how rapid change will be.

Keep working on it!

Posted by bodi 'O  on  06/17  at  09:30 PM

I do not believe that technological singularity will ever come about in the way it is generally supposed. Any technology will operate between finite perameters with limited stimuli. Were it to approach exponential growth it would be undone by the very same process, (f(x) = x/1) All truths reveal themselves as relative and ultimately false therefore intelligence is capped by a ceiling of enlightenment, (buddha) realising that everything is unreal defeats intelligent agendas across all spheres except those acknowledged as unreal, a double negative which delivers us truths that our reality may accomodate but cannot muster.

Another thought that recurs to me is the size of primate brains in relation to their social group, (BBC Bristol). The smallest primates are solitary and as the brains size increases, it does so apparantly in direct proportion to the animals social group and field of awareness. This perfect correlation breaks down at human. In relation to our global awareness and social community, the human brain should be the size of a small car. It follows then that giving up social awareness frees up a huge amount of processing power and thus constitutes a benefit to the species. I think maybe autism is our evolution.

Savvants are clearly able to compute at incredible speeds and if the species splits as some predict, it will be savvants who are best able to interact with advanced technology, a further species benefit?

bodi

Posted by Interested Observer  on  06/18  at  01:41 PM

All of this presupposes that there will be some event recognized as a singularity. It's a very interesting notion, however you may define it, but you all seem to be starting a religion here. While it's certainly proper to prepare for possible future scenarios, a scenario should never be confused with an inevitable certainty. Perhaps a bit less dreaming about future singularities, and a more focus on the difficult present-day science that is the hurdle to arriving at that future?

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