humanity. (The most chilling picture I have seen of this is in [18].) Cairns-Smith [6] has speculated that biological life may have begun as an adjunct to still more primitive life based on crystalline growth. This "problem" about immortality comes up in much more direct ways. Just sticking a grid of high-bandwidth receivers into a brain certainly won't do it. The singularity is a future point in time when societal, economic, and technological change increases at such a rapid pace that the unaided human mind cannot begin to imagine its implications. Plugging in to the optic trunk has the potential for bandwidths of 1 Mbit/second or so. There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur): There may be developed computers that are "awake" and superhumanly intelligent. Though none of these creatures might be flesh-and-blood humans, they might be the closest things in the new enviroment to what we call human now. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. You can also read the full text online using our ereader. [21] Rasmussen, S. et al., "Computational Connectionism within Neurons: a Model of Cytoskeletal Automata Subserving Neural Networks", in Emergent Computation, Stephanie Forrest, ed., pp428-449, MIT Press, 1991. TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: Ray Kurzweil's latest graphs show that technology's breakneck advances will only accelerate -- recession or not. The word, “singularity," in the context of this discussion of technology, is similar to its use in the theory of black holes, the massive objects in space from which light cannot escape. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then there is little doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed shortly thereafter.). I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology. You are currently offline. In fact, I think the new era is simply too different to fit into the classical frame of good and evil. In a political setting, the automation described above would simply enforce the power of the persons making the rules!). That frame is based on the idea of isolated, immutable minds connected by tenuous, low-bandwith links. [16] Minsky, Marvin, Society of Mind, Simon and Schuster, 1985. How to Survive in the Post-Human Era. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. Even if all the governments of the world were to understand the "threat" and be in deadly fear of it, progress toward the goal would continue. Some possible answers (and some further dangers) are presented. But as I noted at the beginning of this paper, there are other paths to superhumanity. He agrees that superhuman intelligences will be available in the near future — and that such entities pose a threat to the human status quo. In August of 1992, Thinking Machines Corporation held a workshop to investigate the question "How We Will Build a Machine that Thinks" [27]. We'd end up with some very powerful hardware, but without the ability to push it further. But for this, we need to know the fine-scale architecture of vision, and we need to place an enormous web of electrodes with exquisite precision. Some of these human equivalents might be used for nothing more than digital signal processing. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, called intelligence explosion, an upgradable intelligent agent will eventually enter a … They would be more like whales than humans. Again, analogies: Think of the different ways we relate to animals. Good's ultraintelligent machine, with a dose of caution. I will return to this point later in the paper.). The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility. It's a wonderful, paradoxical idea (and most of my friends don't believe it) since the game-theoretic payoff is so hard to articulate. Vernor Vinge. Reprinted in Neutron Star, Larry Niven, Ballantine Books, 1968. In the coming of the Singularity, we are seeing the predictions of _true_ technological unemployment finally come true. (In [5], Greg Bear paints a picture of the major changes happening in a matter of hours.). Promises and Perils on the Road to a Global Superintelligence, Creatures of the semiosphere: A problematic third party in the ‘humans plus technology’ cognitive architecture of the future global superintelligence, Machine vs Human: Similarities and Differences, Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine, The Coming of the Golden Age: A View of the End of Progress, Time without end: Physics and biology in an open universe, Computational connectionism within neurons: a model of cytoskeletal automata subserving neural networks, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors, 2015 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS), The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our. It's hard to say precisely what "strong superhumanity" would be like, but the difference appears to be profound. singularity) – hipotetyczny punkt w przyszłym rozwoju cywilizacji, w którym postęp techniczny stanie się tak szybki, że wszelkie ludzkie przewidywania staną się nieaktualne.Głównym wydarzeniem, mającym do tego doprowadzić, byłoby stworzenie sztucznych inteligencji przewyższających intelektualnie ludzi. 15 reviews. [1] Alfve'n, Hannes, writing as Olof Johanneson, The End of Man?, Award Books, 1969 earlier published as "The Tale of the Big Computer", Coward-McCann, translated from a book copyright 1966 by Albert Bonniers Forlag AB, English translation copyright 1966 by Victor Gollanz, Ltd. [2] Anderson, Poul, "Kings Who Die", If, March 1962, pp8-36. But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence. The technological singularity, as it called, is the moment when artificial intelligence takes off into ‘artificial superintelligence’ and becomes … The problem is not simply that the Singularity represents the passing of humankind from center stage, but that it contradicts our most deeply held notions of being. Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace. Use local area nets to make human teams that really work (ie, are more effective than their component members). In the coming of the Singularity, we are seeing the predictions of true technological unemployment finally come true. After all, till we have hardware as powerful as a human brain it is probably foolish to think we'll be able to create human equivalent (or greater) intelligence. Instead of simply trying to model and understand biological life with computers, research could be directed toward the creation of composite systems that rely on biological life for guidance or for the providing features we don't understand well enough yet to implement in hardware. The Coming Technological Singularity. What are the consequences of this event? Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. Some features of the site may not work correctly. This technological shift will alter the global business, government, military and intelligence ecosystems. We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light. Suppose we could tailor the Singularity. In the coming of the Singularity, we are seeing the predictions of _true_ technological unemployment finally come true. The majority of the participants agreed with Moravec's estimate [17] that we are ten to forty years away from hardware parity. Originally, I had hoped that this discussion of IA would yield some clearly safer approaches to the Singularity. Would a thousand years of doggy living add up to any human insight? Certainly the later being would be everything the original was, but so much vastly more. Here are some possible projects that take on special significance, given the IA point of view: Human/computer team automation: Take problems that are normally considered for purely machine solution (like hill-climbing problems), and design programs and interfaces that take a advantage of humans' intuition and available computer hardware. Read Online. Once, galactic empires might have seemed a Post-Human domain. Good had something to say about this, though at this late date the advice may be moot: Good [12] proposed a "Meta-Golden Rule", which might be paraphrased as "Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your superiors." I can't find the source of Good's Meta-Golden Rule, though I have the clear recollection of hearing about it sometime in the 1960s. If not to be avoided, can events be guided so that we may survive? (I have heard thoughtful comic book writers worry about how to have spectacular effects when everything visible can be produced by the technologically commonplace.) As you might guess from the workshop's title, the participants were not especially supportive of the arguments against machine intelligence. In fact, there is concrete work that can be done (and is being done) in this area: Limb prosthetics is a topic of direct commercial applicability. I have only analogies to point to: The rise of humankind. Vernor Vinge, Department of Mathematical Sciences, San Diego State University. Since it involves an intellectual runaway, it will probably occur faster than any technical revolution seen so far. The original version of this article was presented at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30-31, 1993. [4] Barrow, John D. and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford University Press, 1986. Republished by Ace Books, 1988. When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid. We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. Von Neumann even uses the term singularity, though it appears he is thinking of normal progress, not the creation of superhuman intellect. 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