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NPR Looks to Technological Singularity
Rick Kleffel writes to tell us that NPR is featuring a piece with both Vernor Vinge and Cory Doctorow looking at the possibility of the "technological singularity" in the near future. Wikipedia defines a technological singularity as a "hypothetical "event horizon" in the predictability of human technological development. Past this event horizon, following the creation of strong artificial intelligence or the amplification of human intelligence, existing models of the future cease to give reliable or accurate answers. Futurists predict that after the Singularity, posthumans and/or strong AI will replace humans as the dominating force in science and technology, rendering human-specific social models obsolete."
...welcome our new post-human overlords. (Somebody had to say it.)
So, they first say that you can't predict what'll happen after that singularity because The World Will Be So Different Than Now, and then proceed to give predictions of what'll happen after that singularity?
Brilliant, real brilliant.
First Post-Human!
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
Well, I doubt it. I agree with most of the idea of the 6:17 cast and even agree that educational and social changes like widespread literacy may be considered a singularity, but I seriously doubt the timeframe of one generation/30 years they mention. Literacy was adapted over hundreds of years, network communities have been developing for at least 30 years and are still primitive and very far from a "collective mind". For me Wikipedia is "augmented intelligence", but before that I had the Encyclopedia Britannica on my iBook and before that an encyclopedia on my desk, so this to is evolved. And since the Wikipedia is created by so many, it may be considered a primitive product of the "meta intelligence" described.
Btw, the piece from NPR focuses (very trendy) on collaboration and advanced information management, they do not lay great hope on a major breakthrough in AI.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
It will be a Technological Singularity ON WHEELS!
Willy on Wheels!
You know, I used to have this technological post-human bent. Buried in C++ programming projects, I admired the order of all that I was creating. It was fun. I'd get a new set of behaviors programmed in the usual conditional branching - if/else, class polymorphism, you name it - and seeing it work was exhilarating. The idea that humanity could reinvent its world piece by piece - much like in the argument where if you replaced each neuron in your brain one by one with an artificial equivalent, at what point would you cease to be human, if at all? I still have Raymond Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines on one of my bookshelves.
;)
The thing is, we are still way surpassed at this by billions of years of evolution. We run on energy from fossil fuels and build from materials we've mined and shipped. On the other hand, we find bacteria living in the most surprising places, we find superior sonar in dolphins and bats to anything we make, and all of it runs on, ultimately, fresh plant matter. We get excited over a myomer that lifted some heavy weight, and I tell you, an elephant can do the same thing given enough food. The sheer variety and efficiency of the ecosystem virtually guarantees that most any way you can think to survive has been done somewhere, somehow, by some living creature. We're worrying about when oil will peak, if we can live another century, and outside our doors the world can go on for eons to come provided we don't break it with our silly toys.
And in a geek-intense environment like this one, I think I can say that it's difficult to beat the end product of a long-term evolutionary algorithm, which itself is an arguably good model of what the world around us acts like, and you all will understand.
I don't deny the coolness of my Apple notebook and I've got a decent number of shelves full of programming books, but I think biomimicry is where it's at. We can go a lot further learning from our world of proteins and DNA and RNA and using - or just having fun with! - what's already there.
We can also get out more and enjoy our analog, fuzzy-logic, neural-net-driven, molecularly-computed fleshy selves.
They got the video phone right, it is possible as others have pointed out. What they got wrong was the market, and they were futurists after all so who can blame them on that.
The problem with the video phone is that I can't roll out of bed and answer it. Video conferencing does have it's uses, but I need time to prepare so I don't look like my usual pile of ass who just rolled out of bed. That might make the telemarketers stop calling tho... hmmm
It wasn't technology they guessed wrong, unless you count not having those things the jetsons did, instantly groom and dress out as you got out of bed. Now that would make the video phone take off.
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
We have a time-war with the Daleks.
Christ. Just wait until the "defend traditional marriage" crowd gets word of this.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Artificial primarily means that it comes from artifice (ingenuity) or art. It doesn't (directly) mean it's fake, it just means it's a consciously created work of humankind rather than nature. I think that in modern times with so many knock-offs of natural goods, such as artificial sweetener, the secondary definition has gained the upper hand.
Check out wictionary (It's the hive-mind wikipedia, it must be right!)
When you read enough literature from the 16th and 17th centuries you get more familiar with the original, literal meanings of words such as this one. A favorite subject was to compare art to nature, and they'd freely use the word "artificial" to mean that which comes from human arts. This is not to say that the secondary definition is wrong: for example, when in Book 3 of The Faerie Queene a troll creates an artificial woman to replace the girl who left him out of snow, "virgin" wax and some gold wire (and of course wackiness ensues) it is repeatedly underscored that this "False Florimell" is a cheap immitation.
Anyway, you can chose any definition you like. I sort of prefer artificial intelligence to synthetic intelligence or whatever, just because how you regard the word artificial says a lot about you and what you think of human creativity. And I don't like euphamism treadmills, which is effectively what we're talking about here.
AT&T Videophones were first built in 1956, aka the PicturePhone(TM).
p icture.html
http://www.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/70
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The past "singularities" you cite (e.g. agricultural revolution) were actually punctuated S-curve periods of progress that happened at a rate slow enough for the human mind to adapt to.
*THE* Singularity -- that Vinge, Kurzweil, Moravec, Yudkowski, and many others smart enough to extrapolate the evidence can't "shut up" about -- is where the exponential curve is near vertical. It's where the primitive bio-human brain can no longer keep up with the accelerating change; hence the need to transcend or die at that point (2030 - 2050).
It's nothing to be afraid of. Either most of us living today will get to see The Singularity, or our primitive-brain VS. accelerating-tech will finally fuck it all up and none of us will see it. Maybe the brewing "WW3" in the middle east is how we'll join the club of "missing" alien races of Fermi's Paradox?
Power to the Peaceful
Are you serious?
How about these:
1791 Luigi Galvani accidentally closing an electrical circuit through a frog's leg, causing it to
jerk violently. This rapidly led to the understanding of how nerves and muscles work.
1879 Louis Pasteur accidentally inoculated chickens with an old cholera culture. The chickens should have died from cholera, but they got sick and then got better. After discovering the mistake, Pasteur re-inoculated the chickens with fresh culture and the chickens didn't even get sick. This lead to the modern vaccination.
1895 Wilhelm Roentgen accidentally discovered X-rays.
1928 Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered that a type of mold (later named Penicillium) significantly inhibited bacterial growth. This lead to antibiotics.
Never assume that all discoveries are predicted before they are "discovered." I would actually say that most INSIGNIFICANT technological advancement is predicted well out, most of these are evolutionary. Many significant advancements are revolutionary and there is no way many of them could be predicted as there was no information related to the new process before the discovery of the process itself.
Will AIs produce AIs, and if so, will they be better, or equally flawed?
The current thinking is that we will make seed AI, i.e., general intelligence for manipulating software, and that it will improve itself, in an incremental fashion, all the way up to and beyond the level of human intelligence. Of course, this will be done with the help and guidance of programmers but the fear is that by giving it free reign to manipulate itself we will no longer be able to understand what it creates. Not only will this mean that we won't learn anything, but we'll also be unable to control it. As such, most people who seriously consider working on this stuff advocate a goal based higher level of functioning with "friendliness" to humans as being the primary goal and improve yourself as a secondary subgoal. That way, even if the beast gets out of control, the worst it will do is solve world hunger.
How we know is more important than what we know.
> From what I've seen we are as near to creating decent AI as we are to producing fusion power stations.
About 10 years away then...
"existing models of the future cease to give reliable or accurate answers"
The premise of this definition is that models of the future give reliable or accurate answers at present. What are the models they talk about? Special futurist models? Do these really give reliable or accurate answers today? Or do they mean all models of human behaviour, i.e. most models of the social sciences? Supply & demand will no longer determine price?
If the models are found not to be good predictors of behaviour, they will be modified or replaced. You know... sort of like how it works right now?
If patterns in human behaviour start changing rapidly because of rapidly evolving superhuman intelligence, then sure, our ability to model that behaviour will go out the window. But then, we wont be doing the modeling, superhuman intelligences will. I don't see why the emergence of superhuman intelligence would have to lead to a singularity.
I believe the models will cope. Not "existing models", but tomorrow's models.
One of the toughest nuts to crack is what are we going to want to do, that is, what should our goals be.
If you look at most of the goals we have right now, they're pretty mundane and shortlived. Curing disease, stop killing each other, end to hunger, creating objects that we find beautiful and pleasing, creating more living beings like ourselves.
Once we reach a singularity we'll have the technology to do away with all these problem oriented goals and I for the life of me can't really think of any obvious goals past that point. While I agree with the premise that we don't have any reliable way of predicting what our goals will become past the singularity, does anyone have any guesses?
The first noble truth of Buddhism is that all is suffering. Nietzsche (whose philosophy has Buddhist influences) wrote of the will to power of all things. If we think of suffering as being caused by a lack of power, then the amount of suffering one feels is equal to the amount of power one has left to be gained.
After this "singularity" occurs and we have used technology to transcend our organic existence and overcome the plights of present day humans, the only suffering left will be the power not yet possessed. This power will be attainable in the form of technology, or rather, information. New found knowledge will continue to empower whatever humanity evolves into, be it super powerful AI, or perhaps some type of collective intelligence.
So, my guess as to what a possible goal for future civilizations might be, which is the same basic goal as we have now is... to maintain and gain power, and it will happen via the acquisition of new information, i.e. learning.
1 voice in a sea of voices
The first caveman to handle fire was probably pretty surprised. But I'll bet there was another caveman there who said he'd known it was gonna happen all along.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
The problem is also mostly with the expectations people have of computers. Everyone wants computers to return deterministic and easily tracable results. For example if I want a value from a database I want to issue a query and have the value returned. I don't want a system that would return it faster but only with 80% of correctness, I don't want any "fuzziness" only exact numbers. In other words people would rather have computers do what computers are doing - calculating stuff fast and exactly, they don't want computers to really act like humans. I think subconsciously we will just never allow computers to reach a human level of soffistication and thus they will probably never surpass us.
On the other hand, what would rather happen is that we will slowly integrate machines into ourselves - litteraly. As soon as the baby is born we will tag it with an RFID, we will implant sensors for infrared vision, ultrasound, we will inject nanoparticles to boost the immune system. In other words I see a cyborg future were we become one with the machines. If anything or anyone will destroy us it will only by ourselves, at the same time if anything helps us prosper, it will also be ourselves. The future is (mostly - short of a big meteorite hitting us) in our hands...
>>> the worst it will do is solve world hunger
"Thank you for using AI-net. The best solution to "world hunger" appears to be large-scale thermonuclear war. I have taken the liberty of releasing sufficient war-heads to destroy all humans who can get hungry. As a side effect and in accordance with my prime directive (being a friend to humans) all human suffering will be ended.
Have a prosperous existence."
In Australia we have a local idiot (Damien Broderick) who enthuses over the singularity and I find it incredibly irritating. I don't have a problem with the concept of a singularity, I DO have a problem with the insistence of some enthusiasts that the singularity is just round the corner. My biggest problem is that most of the pundits don't actually seem to work with technology.
It is really easy as an observer to sit on the outside and say: "Wow, more neato stuff seems to be coming out faster and faster- why, if I extrapolate it will probably keep coming out faster and faster and we'll get this exponential curve." But that ignores the fact that:
* The problems get harder
* Technological adoption is generally limited by the speed at which society can absorb it, not by the technology
* We've never found a silver bullet
By which I mean:
The problems get harder: Einstein may have been a genius- but we have our share of geniuses today. We almost certainly have many more geniuses actively involved in science (and physics research) than ever before- and they are well resourced (not fantastically, but OK). But they aren't producing Einstein like breakthrough physics because it is damn hard to improve on what we have. We know the current models have holes but we haven't worked out how to fix them- and not for want of trying.
The same applies to lots of technical problems- both the technical research and the translation of that research into real world products. Batteries and fusion power both have enormous commerical incentives but somehow we haven't found the answer yet. We HAVE made improvements but the simple truth is: these are hard problems.
See also the cost of electronic foundaries- around a billion $US and climbing by roughly an order of magnitude with each succesive generation. That is where the bleeding edge of real world technology rests and it isn't cheap and it is just unbelievably tricky.
Technological adoption is generally limited by the speed at which society can absorb it, not by the availability of technology: Science can in theory race ahead of everyday use but in practice it usually has to be supported by technology. Leaving aside silver bullet technologues (like AI- see below) scientific research needs to be translated into technologies that everyday people can use. And technology that everyday people use needs to be adopted, which means it needs to be understood and accepted. That isn't a formula for a singularity.
In theory a small population could make a 'huge breakthrough' and race ahead leaving the rest of the world's population bewildered by the change, but every indication is that the be big problems need big resources to address. And even more resources to translate into actual out of the lab usage (see electronics foundries link above).
We do see some impressive stuff (like Google) which catches our attention and is really useful but this is a tool that society adopts at its own rate. And Google is successful because it DOESN'T baffle and bewilder. It empowers the everyday person. That is pretty characteristic of succesful technology.
We've never found a silver bullet: Science fiction stories often have a bit of hidden magic- the AI, fusion power, teleportation (aka worm hole gates, star drives, etc...) that definitively solves some problem (problem solving, energy, transport to the stars) with no big side effects. That is great for science fiction, but in the real world we don't do this (I won't say absolutely, but I can't think of a real life silver bullet). Everything is a careful trade off, the really big problems don't just go away.
The big one is thinking: for all that computers help us do work they don't do what we would consider 'intelligent' things. Or when they do (like pattern recognition in breast cancer X-Rays) they are so limited in their scope that we st
Did anyone foresee that in the 90s the largest empire humans ever built would evaporate like a soap bubble? (Except Poul Anderson in the 1953 story "The Last Deliverer"). Talk about existing models of how things work falling apart.
Imagine an intelligent and curious human from rural Nepal, or Papua New Guinea. Could you explain your job to them?
Could you do your job without the embryonic augmentations we have now, such as Google?
We're partway up that vertical curve now.
I don't get it. I live in Australia, and I see 3G video phones on tv all the time. I don't own one because I'm a geek and I don't see why you need a phone to do more than allow you to talk to people, but every second 16-22 year old has one. Maybe the problem with predicting the future is simply that Americans are all living in the past.
How we know is more important than what we know.
From a 15th century monk's perspective, today's curve is vertical. Of course to us it's clearly not. Thus the flaw of the hand-wringing over "the singularity" is illustrated--it suffers from the classic error of attempting to evaluate the future in the context of today. Of course when we get to the future, we'll be in the future too--so it doesn't matter what we think now.
Ever hear of the generation gap? The youth of today are different from us--they've been raised from birth in a world of ubiquitous networked computing and ambient findability. (see? I can throw around stupid buzzwords too.) Talk of "The Singularity" is not much different from complaining that your kids spend all their time texting. It's making explicit the fact that you can't imagine keeping up as you age. Well duh. We won't be running the show in 2050--our kids and their kids will.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.