The Singularity in Our Past

Reading over the comments up to this point, this is a definition debate, not an intelligent conversation. By some useful readings of the word "singularity", they are indeed relative and there are several in our past, and quite likely several in our future. Looking back at the prognostications in 1980 one can fruitfully argue that we've been through one just since then. By other useful readings of the word "singularity", it lies solely in the future if it exists or can exist at all.<p>Arguing which definition is "true" is wrong; definitions can't really true or false, they are simply useful or not useful, nor do they have any direct impact on reality.

Confusions like this are the reason why I favor the intelligence explosion flavour of the singularity ( <a href="http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools" rel="nofollow">http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools</a> ) -- there's no confusion as to whether we've already had one. The industrial revolution, while revolutionary, did not improve on the intelligence that invented it. The single most important part about the singularity is that the technology does improve on the intelligence that invented it.

In Henery Adams's audio biography 'The Education of Henry Adams'<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams</a> (i.e. Henery Adams the grandson of John Quincy Adams was a 19'th century historian). He discusses his theory of history. In his model history is driven by the law of Acceleration which discribes the exponential growth of energy consumption through the 19'th century <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/159/34.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bartleby.com/159/34.html</a>. Exponential growth in energy consumption was viewed as unsustainable as early as the 1860's but Henry Adams noted that it continued throughout his life up until the time he wrote his biography in 1904 and he saw no end to it.

People seem to underestimate how much engineering will be required for intelligence to interact with the environment successfully. My dog might not be as "intelligent" as me, but he knows a lot more than I do when it comes to information gained through hearing, taste and smell. He has better engineering in many respects. Almost any life form beats me in "intelligence" if you define the test right.<p>There are already theories about how to build universal AI algorithms (check out Marcus Hutter's stuff at <a href="http://www.hutter1.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.hutter1.net/</a>). These theories are quite an accomplishment, no doubt. But they boil the problem down to one involving sequence prediction. Let's say that particular form of the problem is now "solved". OK now what sequences would you like to present to the algorithm for training? Ones from the environment? Great, but those will take time to collect. Simulated ones? It takes a lot of knowledge to generate good ones.<p>For these reasons, I suspect the Singularity is safe from us for while.

In order to move this away from debate about semantics I think this meshes nicely with an alternative view of intelligence. Specifically Human intelligence as a social endeavour rather than an individual struggle.<p>If you look at intelligence in that light we have gone through a huge transformation with the printing press, industrial revolution and now internet revolution.<p>Basically if you think of it as each human brain just being a small component able to try out new ideas then spread those ideas... Well that massive human spanning brain is undergoing massive ongoing upgrades in memory capacity and speed of communication.

The idea is that the Singularity would be a point in time where the totality of human expert knowledge would be insufficient to comprehend what an AI (or an AI-designed AI) would be capable of comprehending.<p>If we think human-level AI is possible, then superhuman AI would also be possible. Note, though, that while not infinite, human cognition is complete, that is, a human or group of humans is only limited by time or resources. No matter how much time we have; a dog will never stumble upon quantum mechanics. But given enough time, a human being can construct an expert knowledge repository, even though he himself is unable to understand some of the intermediary steps or details.<p>Now, this is where Singularity takes a turn to religion. Some people believe "it" to a future AI with enough physical means to be indistinguishable from a god. Not just a god, but one single God.

I'm thinking it's more about the evolution of technology. Just because we've had the resources and knowledge to consider ourselves (or even society itself) in a "singularity" doesn't mean it's manifest physically yet. I think quantum computing and the ever-expanding OAuth connections we're seeing will help to bring everybody, literally, closer. Within the next few years I can realistically see a direct connection to a technological singularity. From there I can't even imagine what life on Earth will be like

while human species may be focused on Singularity as a technological event, there is another extremely significant possibility - emergence of human species v2.0, split from inside the current v1.0. It may be helped/facilitated (or may be not) by the technologies - computer, material and/or bio-genetical.<p>The technological singularity, Skynet style, is possibly just crutches for the human v1.0 where is v2.0 may possibly just skip this step.

Ahahaha, life lessons from someone who thinks Dexter is worthy of intellectual consideration.<p>And who gives The Republic serious consideration for the present?...Oh i see you're speaking in Ann Arbour tomorrow, of course you do, just like that "The Republic Is America and The Republic Is Awesome" lecture that is taught in full seriousness in the Yale online courses...now it makes sense, the delusions of apparently omnipotent wealth.<p>So much high school lovin tonight, what's up pups?!