What is the Technological Singularity?

The singularity is <i>not</i> near.<p>Kurzweil continues to pitch his prognostications for strong AI so that he can sell more books and speaking engagements. Despite experts in the fields of biology [1] and cognitive science telling him that we just don't understand these things very well, he professes that the key discoveries lie just around the corner and that we should just wait. You know, there's probably a business in selling some of his followers rapture insurance...<p>I'm a systems biologist who is at an intersection of some of the various fields where Kurzweil makes his boldest predictions, and I'm willing to place some bets. Before we see this ludicrous explosion in technology and AI that he describes, I think we're much more likely to see all of these:<p>* A cure for AIDS.<p>* Whole-genome sequencing for under $100.<p>* A scale up and widespread use of tissue bioreactors.<p>* Identified causes and cures for neurodegeneration.<p>* Effective treatments and diagnostic tools for many or most forms of cancer.<p>* Artificial hematopoietic cells approved for human use (no more blood donations, etc.)<p>* Designer babies with hundreds if not thousands of selected markers.<p>These problems are easier than human-surpassing machine intelligence. While I don't have a problem with believing machines will one day be smarter than us, I find it offensive that this guy continues to sell us on it happening within our lifetimes. It almost certainly won't.<p>Kurzweil has almost no appreciation (and I would argue he has little understanding) for biological systems and their complexity. [2] We can barely understand a single cell, and yet we're supposed to understand the brain in only a few years!<p>The best part is, when is is called out on this argument, Kurzweil admits it. But he then proceeds to tell us silly biologists in the errors of our ways--that we are missing his point entirely. Strong AI doesn't need understanding from the field of biology in order to happen. Consciousness can't be <i>that</i> hard.<p>In closing, SMBC's take: <a href="http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100114.gif" rel="nofollow">http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100114.gif</a><p>[1] PZ Meyers vs. Kurzweil - <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/singularly_silly_singularity.php" rel="nofollow">http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/singularly_silly_...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/08/18/reverseengineering_the_human_brain_really.php" rel="nofollow">http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/08/18/reverseengin...</a>

The thing I don't like about Kurzweil's singularity prediction is it kind of sounds like predictions in the 1960's that we'd all be living in space by now. Yet, here we are 50 years later still burning gas in our cars but we have phenominal GPS technology in our phones. People (even scientists) tend to overestimate the "deepness" of technological advancement and underestimate the "wideness". I predict that by the time a singularity occurs that it'll be much farther out in time and may not even be a distinguishable event.

It sort of annoys me that whenever people discuss technological singularities its always through Kurzweil's ideas. I feel that Verner Vinge, the guy who invented the term, had a much more interesting take on it, and there are other schools of thought as well. <a href="http://singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singularity-schools/" rel="nofollow">http://singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singularity-...</a>

<i>One only needs to look at history to see our capacity for rapid improvement in retrospect. One of my favorite metrics is life expectancy. In 1800, most people wouldn’t expect to live past 30.</i><p>It's hard to take someone seriously writing about science who makes such a dumb mistake. The life expectancy for a 20 year old in 1800 was 64. I don't see how it can even pass the smell test for an intelligent person to assume that a couple hundred years ago people systematically keeled over at 30.

We've already passed the technological singularity, we just don't realize it because we assume machine intelligence is going to act like human intelligence.<p>Look around, computers have been more intelligent than humans in many different domains for decades. Computers can solve complex equations billions of times faster than humans, they can play chess better than people that have dedicated their entire lives to mastering the game, they can sift through the information of billions of websites in hundredths of a second, they can answer obscure and complex questions better than the best Jeopardy players, they can accurately model extremely complex systems like the world's weather, and the list goes on and on and on.<p>But guess what, your calculator isn't plotting to kill you because unlike humans it hasn't been programmed to do that. There may come a time when someone is evil or careless enough to program these traits into a machine capable of acting on them, but this is a game humans (and life in general) have been playing for a very long time, and we're very good at it. Good luck programming a billion years of evolution based learning into your calculator.

I'm skeptical about TS because it seems to good to be true (or too terrible), but every time I hear about it I can't help but think of this clip [1] from Neil deGrasse Tyson about how aliens would only have to be less than a percent smarter than us for us to look like peons to them. So it makes it seem inevitable that if strong AI comes to pass and AI is measures more intelligent than us, it's the end of human civilization and the begin of the era of machines. Our only hope is they decide to keep us around as pets, and are good owners. If so we'll be able to kick our feet back and enjoy eternity (should we choose to live it) debating iPhone vs. Android on Hacker News.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-uZZ7RdL5E" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-uZZ7RdL5E</a>

It's amazing how similar Kurzweil's observations about technology are to Stafford Beer's same observations in the early 1970s. Beer even draws an exponential graph and talks about a succession of S-curve shaped technology paradigms.