Are we reaching a technological singularity?

[Dale Dough]

Found this in soko's share your bookmarks post:

Article

It's a very long read, but well worth it IMO. I will try to summarize:

- Technology progresses at an exponential rate. According to this guy, even the growth rate itself is increasing exponentially, because in the process we improve our methods. Compare what has happened in the last century vs. the last millennium, or the last millennium vs. the last 10000 years
- In the short term, we don't immediately notice this, because it seems as though advances increase at a linear rate.
- Example: computers and communications technology. It seems like the Net has sprouted up and started to expand rapidly only in the last ten or fifteen years, but the underlying technological capabilities have been increasing at an exponential rate for over a century.
- Things that are now unthinkable may well lay much closer ahead than we think. The article mentions stuff like nanobots interacting with our brain, enabling us to expand our own intellectual capacity, and transform that intelligence into a computer, which will be vastly more intelligent and much quicker. The author believes that we will reach this ability well within the next fifty years, based on current (as of 2001) growth rates.
- Humanity as we know it will take on a whole different meaning. Read the article if you're interested. The author calls this a technological singularity.


I have no real background in physics, math, engineering or such, but I'm hard-pressed to find a convincing argument that disputes this. The one thing I notices is that in some cases, the interpretation of growth rates as exponential might have been some wishful thinking on the part of the author, but I'm not sure.

I would be very interested to hear some informed opinions on this.

[AWoodside]

I've read a lot of Kurzweil stuff and find him to be very convincing, certainly one of the most compelling futurist/transhumanists alive today. One thing he never addresses adequately in my opinion, however, is social barriers that may prevent progress. It's clear that there are groups with power that are against progress in this way. Just look at the hurdles stem cell/cloning research has to overcome. It's possible that progress will be severely retarded by things like war/legislation/religious groups bombing research labs etc. I tend to agree with him that unimpeded progress might result in a 'singularity' within 50 years... but I'm not sure how optimistic to be about the potential social barriers.

[madnak]

No.

[Dale Dough]

Sorry for the repost, I guess I could have figured out that if it's in some 2+2er's bookmarks, there might already have been a thread about it.. will read that other thread now, thanks!

[madnak]

No problem. I don't get annoyed by reposts, there's no way you can find all the earlier threads with this search system.

But I think that thread was especially good, probably the best we'll get on the topic.

[Metric]

While he might be off on certain specific dates, and the development of specific technologies, I think his big points are pretty solid. Yes, technological growth is an exponential process, and if it stays that way humanity is in for some fundamental changes in a surprisingly short period of time.

[Andy Ross]

[ QUOTE ]
Technology progresses at an exponential rate. According to this guy, even the growth rate itself is increasing exponentially...

[/ QUOTE ]

Hahaha: profound. What about the growth of the growth rate? Surely that can't be exponential.

[Dale Dough]

Hmm, how does that work anyway? Double exponential growth? Is that any different from 'simple' exponential growth, i.e. can the function f[x]=a^bx^cx be expressed as d^x? My gut says no, but I'm not sure. Business major..

I also did some more browsing of his website, and the discussion on his articles by visitors from his site didn't seem very professional - if those people had any credentials, they masked it well. You'd think that if his ideas were so profound, they would provoke more serious discussion. That means either the experts all agree, or they decided it wasn't worth even bothering - I'm leaning towards the latter. There was one article that disputed his 'singularity' concept - the singularity will always seem near, as exponential graphs look the same everywhere. His rebuttal was something like blah blah blah I don't mean an actual infinite rate.

That's another thing.. WTF is up with that anyway? Even I know that exponential growth does not result in a singularity. He probably does, too. My guess is he decided that it sounds cool, because people learn about black holes and event horizons on Discovery channel these days, and it'll boost the sales of his books. And diet pills and what not.

I am disappointed. I was reading that article all day and imagining the possibilities in my mind, and got carried away. I won't dispute his achievements in computer applications, but I'm somewhat disillusioned about his credibility as a scientist.

[m_the0ry]

This is a good question that unfortunately cannot be answered yet.

Look at the picture on the right of this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function

And then the picture here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function

Note that, if you were a person walking along both curves through time, there is no way to discern between the two curves until you reach the inflection point shown in the Logistic curve (also called S-curve). There is some evidence that the exponential curve will not hold - 45nm microprocessor fabrication came slower than 90nm and up. At the same time, some scientists argue that there will be no inflection point and the singularity will occur.

I believe that if a tech singularity is going to happen, it will happen through the creation of seed-strong-AI; in english, artificial intelligence that can truely learn and discover beyond what it is distinctly told to. Unfortunately this also marks the point where humans become inferior to robots (terminator anyone?).

Still I think a tech singularity is highly unlikely. I expect to see technology growth rate slow down in the next few years. The logistic graph occurs far more in nature than the exponential curve. This begs the question - is technology natural?

[Bad Beat Bill]

I've read this and found is fascinating. Where he talks about transferring a brain into a computer is where it was interesting...if our consciousness is a tangible thing after all, it should be possible to transfer it into some kind of computer shouldn't it? In which case people could be playing WoW 24/7 rather than 18/7?