The So-Called Singularity
I stumbled upon (using StumbleUpon of course) a few articles about futurists, and one of the main ideas I found were essays about “the Singularity” Put simply, “the Singularity” is a theoretical period in time when our inventions, generally computers, become so intelligent that they are able to recreate themselves without human intervention, doing so faster and better than we ever could. Thus the time to intelligence curve becomes extremely exponential. A post singularity world would be made of the stuff of science fiction movies. Super intelligent humans (assuming we’re invited to the party) would interface their minds with computers and understand the physics of the universe with such clarity that none of the human problems that exist today would trouble us.
I have no problem with optimism, but I’m also a fan of reality. Some futurists predict singularities in a spectacularly short amoun of time. Maybe they should watch the futuristic science fiction movies of the eighties, and see if any of those predictions came true. The problem with the whole idea in my opinion, is that the whole thing is based on an exponential learning curve. Moore’s Law is no law at all, it’s already failed. Advances in computing power are going to start coming at high prices. We’re going to have to start using our brain power to maximize computer use, instead of just relying on next years processors.
No human has ever learned anything exponentially. You learn the easy things first, which feels exponential, and then things level off, and you get into the unexplored territory where you have to struggle to pick up anything, which is when most humans give up. Learning curves are logarithmic for us, and they will be for computer intelligences if we ever manage to create them.
The whole thing is kind of fun to think about, but leave it for the movies.
November 27th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
I like what you have to say here. I believe that, in many cases scientific advances come in fits and starts with lag periods in between. We also have lots of discoveries that turn out to be dead ends. I agree, we are going to have to use our brain power to make computers more effective because we really are coming up against something of a wall in the processor world. The easy stuff comes quick, just like you said, then we wait for another breakthrough.