“Singularity:
Of Men and Machines”
“The human process will achieve a kind of infinite
velocity, everything becomes linked with everything else and matter becomes
mind…” – Erik Davis
Imagine having a time machine and dropping the latest
Iphone or Samsung Galaxy inside, sending it back 60 years into the past, when
computers cost over 60M dollars and were so massive, they had to occupy a whole
room. How would the beholder of such technology react, finding a device
equaling the size of his palm that had the same computing power as the computer
then?
Gadgets, technology, and computer sciences are facets of
human society that are constantly being updated, revised, and improved at
faster and faster rates. Through the years, functional machine intelligence has
been getting smaller and cheaper, as reflected in advances in chip-speed relating
to cost-effectiveness visible through the last 100 years. (Kurzweil 2001)
To
put it in perspective: here is a graph calculated by computer engineer,
futurist, and major proponent in the theory of singularity, Ray Kurweil. Here,
he presents the aggregate calculations per second the average computer can make
in different decades. You will notice that this processing power only grows as
time progresses.
photo source: http://williamnicholls.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/kurzweil.jpg
What is Singularity?
According to Kurzweil’s Law of
Accelerating Returns, the spike in computing power will be expedited simply by
the tendency of technological advancement to stack upon itself as years pass.
Inevitably, as computers are tools for people and are becoming increasingly
like us in the way they process information and react, we will give birth to
superhumanly intelligent machines. This will catalyze a total shift in human
society as whole, as machines will then be the most intelligent and powerful of
all of us, and the exponential growth demonstrated above will reach heights
unknown, as super intelligent minds will continue to breed other super
intelligent beings. Consequently, new technologies, possibilities, theories,
politics, and other aspects that govern human disposition will surely be
compromised; the age of humanity will give way to a new era. (Vinge 1993) This
is what futurists call “Technological Singularity” Kurweil predicts this event
to occur at the year 2045. However, some argue that it may be much further off,
since mapping the human mind into a machine means a full comprehensive
understanding of human cognition and neural networks, which we have yet to
achieve (Allen 2011)
The singularity may be achieved
in two ways: either through the birth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) or by
Intelligence Amplification (IA). (Vinge 1993) The former suggests creating
mentally superior machines that can carry out all the functions of a human
being (robots) and the latter suggests assimilating the human condition, mostly
through Nano and biotechnology – connecting technology to our skin and minds,
and turning ourselves into super intelligent beings (cyborgs).
Human
“What is life? In all
likelihood, I think, it is a play between logic and world. It is a set of
effective procedures on numbers or objects that represent ontologically
necessary states of affairs, including the calculus of eating and being eaten
and the need to reproduce, and that produces self-consciousness in the process
of designing these functions. What is intelligence? Much the same thing, I
think, but not bound up with biological and evolutionary history.” – Carl H. Flygt
The entirety of the theory begs a
philosophical question: at what line do we prescribe what is to be considered
human? If a machine were to develop such a complexity of cognition that it
learned to develop emotions and was encased in the blood, tissue, and skin of a
human, how would you say it was still inhuman? There is reasonable evidence to
doubt that being “human” resonates only to our biological roots.
That being said, I do not think that
singularity is something to fear. The machines and tools we make will in a
sense only be extensions of us, like our children. Their future role in society
as the superior class will only be likened to natural selection, which has been
occurring since the beginning of time. Should singularity come true, it will
only be simple evolution.
Redd
Claudio
2013-59776
References:
Kurzweil, Ray, 2001, “The Law Of Accelerating Returns”, KurzweilAI
| Accelerating Intelligence. http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns, March 6,
2014
Allen, Paul, 2011, “The Singularity Isn’t Near”, MIT
Technology Review, Mark Greeves, http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425733/paul-allen-the-singularity-isnt-near/, March 7,
2014
Vinge, Verner, 1993, “What is Singularity?” Department of
Mathematical Sciences, San Diego State University, http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html, March 7,
2014
Flygt, Carl, 2007, “Philosophy and The Singularity” Conscious
Conversation, http://www.consciousconversation.com/Essays/PhilosophyandtheTechnologicalSingularity.htm, March 9,
2014
No comments:
Post a Comment