Future Shock -- The 'Singularity' is Coming

The "singularity" is the buzzword among technophiles, scientists and future-gazers these days. It's their name for a point in the near future when computers become more intelligent than humans, and evolution leaps into hyper-drive. And, writes PNS Associate Editor Walter Truett Anderson, it's inspiring giddy utopian dreams as well as dark nightmares among the faithful.

Although the word "singularity" hasn't quite made it into the general public's vocabulary yet, it is stirring great excitement among growing numbers of scientists, technophiles and future-gazers, who use it to describe what they believe may be one of the great watershed events of all time -- the point at which the computational ability of computers exceeds that of human beings.

In various meetings, articles and of course Web sites, speculations about what form this may take range from glowing scenarios of a technological golden age to dire predictions that it will lead to the extinction of the human species.

The term -- at least in the way it is now being used -- was coined in a 1993 article by Vernor Vinge, a mathematician-computer scientist-science fiction writer. In the article, Vinge cited research on the accelerating growth of computational power and predicted that when it reaches and passes human levels, it will kick off an unprecedented burst of progress. Smarter machines will make still-smarter machines on a still-shorter time scale, and the whole process will go roaring past old-fashioned biological evolution like the Road Runner passing a sleeping Wile E. Coyote.

"From the human point of view," Vinge wrote, "this change will be a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control. Developments that before were thought might only happen 'in a million years' (if ever) will likely happen in the next century."

Vinge cautiously predicted that the singularity would occur somewhere between 2005 and 2030. Since then, a consensus of singularity watchers seems to have formed around the year 2020. That's the target date identified by Ray Kurzweil, inventor and writer ("The Age of Spiritual Machines"), who is certain that by then we will have computers costing about $1,000 with the intelligence level of human beings.

For some, the expectation of the singularity has taken on an almost cult-like aura, reminiscent of the Harmonic Convergence that enchanted New Agers in the 1930s, or the Rapture prophecy popular among many Christians, who expect God to descend some day soon and whisk the faithful off to paradise.

In this case, the vision is an explosion of computer-generated scientific and technological innovation, leading to -- well, leading to just about anything you can imagine: new sources of food and building materials and energy, interstellar space travel, human immortality.

Say, for example, advances in nanotechnology continue to the point where microscopic machines can manipulate reality on a molecular level. Billions of intelligent micro-machines might course through your bloodstream, repairing damaged cells, attacking viral invaders, even synthesizing new proteins from the molecules around them. Viewed from here, claims of human-engineered immortality may seem a little less outrageous.

But many take a darker view of the singularity breakthrough and the technologies it may spawn. Imagine that same nanotechnology gone terribly wrong, a plague of superintelligent micro-robots loosed on the biosphere.

It was precisely the singularity prediction that led computer scientist Bill Joy to write his widely read Wired magazine article, "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us," in which he warned that we may, in effect, be engineering our own obsolescence by creating self-replicating machines that will charge off on evolutionary pathways far beyond us.

"The new Pandora's boxes of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are almost open," Joy wrote, "yet we seem hardly to have noticed."

How likely is it that anything of this sort will in fact happen, either for good or ill? Will computers really become smarter than human beings?

If you stick with the simplest and most mechanistic definition of "smart," the answer has to be a resounding "yes." IBM has already designed a machine that can outplay chess champions, and there are many reasons to expect that computer science will indeed move beyond silicon-chip technology into new realms of speed and memory.

But, say doubters such as British mathematician Roger Penrose and American philosopher John Searle, this doesn't necessarily guarantee that anything resembling either the fantasies or the nightmares of the singularity-watchers will come to pass. The central point of such dissent is that pure computational ability isn't thought, intelligence or anything resembling consciousness. It is simply mechanical efficiency, and as it increases we will have, instead of a new chapter in evolution, a lot of really good computers.

And there are yet other scenarios: Perhaps, instead of the machines going off on their own evolutionary pathway, leaving us behind, electronic and biological intelligence will merge -- each of us with a brain augmented to superhuman levels. Perhaps there will be a merging of all humanity with all computers into a vast global brain.

The possibilities seem to be endless, the whole subject simultaneously too far-out for most of us to grasp, yet too close to today's reality to be completely dismissed. We may know what is happening, but we can't be at all certain where it may lead.

One thing seems certain: Homo sapiens is going to exit from the 21st century looking like a considerably different animal from what it was going in.

Anderson (waltt@well.com) is a political scientist and author of "All Connected Now: Life in the First Global Civilization" (Westview Press, 2001) and "The Future of the Self" (Tarcher Putnam, 1997).

I really don't think that computers will replace us for quite some time. They're a damn long way from doing that right now. Two or three hundred years maybe. Computers, and computing systems are still stupid and prone to breakage. We are 50 years into the revolution, and are just beginning to reap the fruits.

Already, Star Trek is looking primitive. Why would anyone bother going to as much work as they seem to put into doing everything. There will be systems that surpass anything that could be coordinated manually, but for overall strategic direction - in terms of the human economy - machines won't be able to function better than us because they are not us. Their interests will diverge.

Imagine that same nanotechnology gone terribly wrong, a plague of superintelligent micro-robots loosed on the biosphere

I saw a scientist on The Outer Limits whose body was taken over by nano-robots and believe me, it was not a pretty sight! I don't think he was ever able to get another date following that episode.

I'll go on record as being the first person to chant "SAY NO NO TO NANO!"

I remember reading a book by Vernor Vinge called "Marooned in Realtime" about 10 years ago. It was pretty good.

It mentioned the "singularity" as a small part of the plot. Basically, people could travel forward in time(but not backward, and they couldn't be very precise about when they came out of their "bobble") and some travellers would bump into eachother and look for eachother as they jumped forward. Nobody knew how the singularity happenned, they were just jumping forward, and one time they found that all of humanity had gone. As if they were suddenly beamed out. Coffee cups half-full, cigarette ash in the trays as if someone had just left them burning, etc...

When I saw the word singularity in the post title, I thought about the novel, but didn't know it was talking about that.

Personally, I think that machine intelligence and advanced nanotech are alot farther away than 2020. There will be space pioneers and near-immortality for a long time before we have to deal with such issues.

What passes for intelligence in machines is really just emulation. Someone still has to do the analysis and program decision process into the machine.

Motors are made to be extremely small, but they are the simplest of motors, and they are still not small enough, for instance, to fit through the tip of a capillary in a human. You need something alot more sophisticated than a motor to repair cells. And there are physical limits. The machine has to be made of molecules, and to be a sophisticated machine, it has to have many complex molecules. How will it get inside a cell if it is larger than a cell? Biochemistry offers more hope along those lines.

Nanotech and AI are neat ideas, but for now they are strictly the stuff of sci-fi novels and open-ended research grants.

Perhaps there will be a merging of all humanity with all computers into a vast global brain.
To some extent the INTERNET is that, already. To an extent. But it has been pointed out that the scarce resource that technology

radio,
TV,
video games,
INTERNET
--and high speed printing before that

has been driving to tap is the attention of people. Perhaps humans will retain control of

the "oh en slash oh eff eff" switch. (ON/OFF)
Nothing else matters . . .

There is an article in Technology Today which addresses "computer intellegence" or AI, and they come to an entirely different conclusion. Most of the work in AI is no longer directed at making a machine like a person, but at making a machine do its job better.

Plus the issue is not intellegence, since it all depends on what you use to measure it. My Excel spreadsheet is more intelligent than me if you use computational ability as the measure. But make the measure consciousness and you hit a barrier that may not be overcome. Computers may be able to beat a grand master in chess - not by thinking BTW but in punching numbers- but we can still pull the plug.

With regard to the Vernor Vinge "singularity," that learned man was discussing the possibility of an advance in human capability -- computer-augmented, yes, but still under human direction -- that propelled a change in humanity's physical nature. The notion that the computer itself had transcended human mentation was not part of Dr. Vinge's concept.

It's dangerous to make analogies between computers and any other human tool. Computers are the first man-made entity capable of storing (certain kinds of) information processing ability in a flexible and reproducible form. While the possibility of future artificial sentiences, functionally indistinguishable from human, cannot be ruled out, the evidence is still dubious that a program could ever equal the ability of its designers to assess and respond to unanticipated environmental changes -- as good a shorthand definition of the function of intelligence as I can produce before my second cup of coffee.

I should note that some august minds, Douglas Hofstadter among them, disagree with me, and feel it's only a matter of time.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

For some, the expectation of the singularity has taken on an almost cult-like aura, reminiscent of the Harmonic Convergence that enchanted New Agers in the 1930s, or the Rapture prophecy popular among many Christians, who expect God to descend some day soon and whisk the faithful off to paradise.

There weren't New Agers in the 1930s as they were known in the 1980s. There were spiritualists and theosophists who melded various strands of spiritualism and pseudo-Hinduism/Buddhism/Tibetan Buddhism/Egyptian Book of the Dead-occultism. This goes well back into the latter half of the 19th century at least (turn of the century Chicago was a major center for the Vedanta Society), though certain mystical cults go much further back. The subject of the article sounds more like a mechanically-aided version of the Omega point of Chardin:

Teilhard's attempts to combine Christian thought with modern science and traditional philosophy aroused widespread interest and controversy when his writings were published in the 1950s. Teilhard aimed at a metaphysic of evolution, holding that it was a process converging toward a final unity that he called the Omega point. He attempted to show that what is of permanent value in traditional philosophical thought can be maintained and even integrated with a modern scientific outlook if one accepts that the tendencies of material things are directed, either wholly or in part, beyond the things themselves toward the production of higher, more complex, more perfectly unified beings. Teilhard regarded basic trends in matter--gravitation, inertia, electromagnetism, and so on--as being ordered toward the production of progressively more complex types of aggregate. This process led to the increasingly complex entities of atoms, molecules, cells, and organisms, until finally the human body evolved, with a nervous system sufficiently sophisticated to permit rational reflection, self-awareness, and moral responsibility. While some evolutionists regard man simply as a prolongation of the Pliocene fauna--an animal more successful than the rat or the elephant--Teilhard argued that the appearance of man brought an added dimension into the world. This he defines as the birth of reflection: animals know, but man knows that he knows; he has "knowledge to the square."

If we predict an event or phenomena, then we should predict its initial effects, or indications...
So, a good exercise would be to try to anticipate and identify conditions or indications that would mark the beginnings of this global computer consciousness.

Where and how would the evidence first appear?
Currently human motivations are driving the process of wiring the world's computers together and increasing computer power.

What would be the first indication that computers are beginning to operate in their own self-interest (and against human interest)?

The "singularity" ain't gonna get me. I plan to be a hold-out, maintaining my individuality and using machines only as obedient servants.

Why choose between singularity and individuality? What if the singularity is the result of individual expression? What if the singularity doesn't entail humans ceding authority to machines, but humans gaining abilities that enable them to do what only machines can do now?

Personally, I've never seen machines as being in opposition to human nature. I see technology as an expression and extension of those essential properties that sets man above the rest of nature. We are animals, yes, but that's not what's great about mankind; the world is full of mere animals. Our technology is our essential selves.

an advance in human capability -- computer-augmented, yes, but still under human direction

I agree, that's the way I view it as well.

If the singularity is possible at all, it is probably unavoidable as well. I look forward to it to tell you the truth. Some predictions have it happening as soon as 30 years from now. I'll be 66 then. Maybe I'll live long enough to have my mind uploaded or stored to disk before I die, or at least be able to take advantage of the advances in nano and medical tech to live much longer.

The thing with the singularity, because of the effects of doubling computer speed, most of advances will happen in the last 12 to 18 months preceding the event. You wouldn't be able to stand off 2 years previous and say- Hmmm singularity is almost here. Before the last doubling of processor speed, you would effectively be only halfway to the event, even though it is only a year away. I find this to be an interesting effect. It almost guarantees that the event will be a real "showstopper" because of the bang with which it arrives.

You might already know this, so I'll put it out there for those who might want to read more- A guy named Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote a piece called "Staring Into the Singularity". It's pretty interesting. In his way of thinking (and in that of many singularity enthusiasts) the Singularity should be the overriding goal for all humanity to work towards. For when we reach the post singularity world, all human suffering will be erased forever. No more death. No more pain. No more hunger. Man will throw off the shackles of his body and become as gods in the universe. It sounds crazy until you look at those graphs that plot the advancement of processing speed. At one point in the not too distant future- it just shoots right off the page; straight up into an unknowable place.

I also like to toy with the idea that only those of us who ever knew life before the computer will truly appreciate the singularity. Young people today have never known life without computer games, vcr's and, increasingly, the internet. For the coming generation, the transition won't even be noticed. It'll be marketed to them and they'll buy it and stick it into the pockets of their baggy pants or whatever they're wearing at that point. They'll get the interface surgically implanted in their brain because that's what the latest fashion models on the catwalks were doing. They'll stare at us crazy people with a stupid kind of wonder as we're trying to convince them that humans haven't always been this way- that just a few years ago, there wasn't even television... Ah, the future. It's almost here. Free Beer Tomorrow.

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