Technological Singularity and Spiritual Enlightenment

Technological Singularity and Spiritual Enlightenment
October 23,
San Rafael, California

IEET Fellow Ben Goertzel will give a talk on Technological Singularity and Spiritual Enlightenment at the Science and Nonduality conference, Sat Oct 23 in San Rafael, California.

Abstract:

The Technological Singularity is conceived by futurists such as Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil as the point in time when scientific and technological advance occur so fast that new revolutionary achievements are essentially instantaneous on the human scale. If current trends in computer hardware, AI biotech and nanotech continue, this may occur around the middle of this century. But, in futurist circles where these matters are discussed, it is too rarely asked what the Singularity might mean in experiential terms. What would it be like for a mind to become 1000 times more intelligent, more open-minded, more self-aware, due to technological enhancements? Might the Singularity appear internally as a form of Enlightenment, in the spiritual sense—different from, and perhaps in some senses exceeding, the Enlightenment achieved via traditional human spiritual practices? Might advanced technology enable phenomena currently considered anomalous and peripheral (e.g. psi phenomena) to play a more major role in the lives and minds of our successors? What can we limn about this sort of technology-catalyzed Enlightenment, from our present perspective? Of course, technology advance and intelligence increase and radical cognitive architecture innovation don’t alter the fundamental nature of mind and being—but yet, they may provide a radically different manifestation, in the same sense that the evolutionary transition from one-celled organisms to birds, mammals and humans did.