Ray Kurzweil has a hypothesis. He thinks that technological innovation is increasing so fast that, in a relatively short time, it will change humanity so completely that it is impossible to predict what human existence will be like in 20-50 years (or so). The convergence of information science, computing, biotech, and nanotech will cause a fundamental shift in the pace of technological expansion..so huge a shift that he has given it a name: the "Singularity".
Ray wrote a book on it. Or three. His latest one is currently #22 in book sales at amazon. The idea is popular. Very popular. Why do I mention it here? People who believe in this idea (they're called "Singularitarians" or something) really love the idea of synthetic biology because they see it as the next stepping stone towards bionic ... everything.
I'm not going to deny the appeal of the idea or try to dissuade people from believing in it. It may very well come true, eventually. However, Ray describes technological innovation as an exponential process. (As time increases, the technological state of the art increases like exp(t) ). I also think that technological innovation is exponentially increasing.
But there's a funny thing about the exponential process, exp(t) ... or exp(r*t) if you want to include a rate of growth. If you start from an initial time and watch the growth of technology, it looks grand and awe-inspiring. But if every few time periods (years? months?) you get used the state of technological innovation, then the rate of technology growth no longer feels exponentially increasing. Instead, if you look back in time you will see more or less linear growth and if you look ahead in time you should expect linear growth. Why?
Well, if you split up exp(r*t) into the growth you got used at time to, which is exp(r*to), and the growth you should expect in the future, which is exp(r*(t - to)), then you get exp(r*t) = exp(r*to) * exp(r*(t - to)).
If you Taylor expand this and consider (t - to) to be small (ie. the near future) then you will get: exp(r*t) = exp(r*to) * (1 + (t-to) ).
What does that mean? If you already got used to computers, GM foods, iPods that can fit in your jeans pocket, and just the idea of a Space Elevator, then you should NOT expect miraculous technological innovation in the near future. And if you continuously get used to the innovation that regularly occurs in the marketplace and in academia than you will never be completely surprised by what's coming around the corner.
So, the people of the future will never experience a Singularity. If the people of the past were to somehow catapult themselves into the future, then they will experience the Singularity. But that holds true if they are cavemen experiencing Medieval Europe or Renaissance Europe experiencing modern tech.
I think the future will still hold amazing feats of technological innovation. But, by the time they occur, we will be more or less ready for them. At least, we will be more ready for them than the word 'Singularity' implies. I think anyone that suggests future tech will somehow supplant humanity's human-ness needs to read more Shakespeare.
Posted by sali0090 at September 27, 2005 09:59 PM | TrackBackHi, I've read comments similar to yours from some other commentors on TSIN.
My take is you're missing something: the Singularity (the unknowable part at the end of this process) will most likely be driven by nonhuman superintelligent AGIs (artificial general intelligence). There's no other way for a final huge spike in technological development unless it is driven by increasing faster, smarter, and more rapidly self-improving Minds.
Now Kurzweil does seem to posit that we'll be merging or something with these AGIs, but I'm not so sure of that.
Posted by: JB at September 29, 2005 12:12 AMFirst, what is TSIN?
And do we know if Artficial Intelligence can innovate? I mean, I've seen aspects of AI, such as (fuzzy) logic, data mining, and combinatorial synthesis, create some really interesting knowledge. But can a computer generate something from nothing? Do computers have creativity? It's certainly not an answered question. Kurzweil is a pioneer in AI. Can he definitively answer this question or is this one of those "eventually it'll possible!"?? Remember, they've been saying that for 30 years...literally.
I think the future will look a lot different than the present (of course!). The convergence of mobile AI, biotech, and nanotech will lead to some amazing stuff. But, if we were in the 1940s prognosticating about the future, we can say the same thing about the transistor! It did change the world! But ... lots of things haven't changed (and maybe some things will never change). I just wince when people say "X" will cause such profound changes that the future will be unrecognizable, even by people living in that era. That has never happened in history. What's really changed?
On February 4 I plan to be co-teaching a 1 credit class called Innovation Studies: Innovative excchange systems for the 21st century. The singularity is going to change all the rules. What will happen to the rules of exchange? We are going to come up with ways to distribute the engineering of our own evolution.
As the singularity brings about 'posthuman' or 'enhanced' individuals, how will exchange systems adjust so that the 'naturals' or 'unenhanced' benefit. Will the gains mean that all humans get an income stream like Alaskans get from shared oil resources or like some native americans get from shares gambling revenues?
Posted by: Willard James Steinberg at October 8, 2005 05:55 PMI agree to your point that we get used to existing technology and since any new technology build up on existing technology, it must not surprise it.
But the point here is that: We will achieve *Singularity* when the technology will advance so rapidly that we woudn't have time to reflect on it. This situation is similar to video which is nothing but fast moving still images. Our brain can't register a change until 1/10 of second, and thus the magic of video.
This is singularity, technology advancing at near infinity speeds. If we don't develop our brains alongwith the developing technology, then we will have no option but to surprise ourselves.
Posted by: Paras Chopra at October 17, 2005 10:46 AMCan you give me some examples of technology that will so revolutionize our way of life as to make its acceptance impossible, by even a fraction of humanity? The Space Elevator was considered science fiction (which is still a form of acceptance), but now it is becoming a mainstream idea of what the future of space travel may be like.
We, as humans, have an amazing ability to change the way we view and interact with the world. We don't need to understand everything about a technology in order to accept and use it. Think about it: Do you really know how your nano iPod works? Probably not, but you can master its usage to do a wide variety of tasks that would have been impossible even 10 years ago.
The same applies to new technology. How is new technology created? So far, it's advanced by humans and by human thinking. By definition, then, there is at least one human who understands the technology because they created it. They then teach others how to create and use it.
I think one cornerstone of KJ's thinking is that computers (AI) will be the ones developing new technology in the future. Is that even possible? Will computers be able to develop fundamentally new technologies in the future? This remains an unanswered question.
Someone needs to prove that AI can be a creative force (and not merely combinatorially synthesizing new information). Until then, on what basis can you say that technology will progress much faster than human thought?
Posted by: Howard Salis at October 17, 2005 11:06 AMWell if you're thinking about space elevators you're still stuck in the 1940's. The singularity is akin to the point at which the perceptual boundary between inner space and outer space dissolves. What's the point of an elevator if you can navigate with the mind. All the old Shakespearean perceptual models of the world are supposed to fall apart at the singularity point. They already are partly falling apart, (i.e, T.S. Eliot...). Or at least "fall apart" from the perspective that there are immutable laws. Maybe it will be the creation of an interface to consciousness itself. Hard to say since it's all just speculation at this point, but I think you can't really think about space travel and all of these AI fantasies - what lies ahead is so bizarrely beyond our imaginations that it will probably make the difference between being alive and being dead meaningless. That seems like a strong statement, but you have to remember there are basically limitless states of mind beyond the normal one most of us experience every day and that these states never enter the equation. Well soon they may.
Posted by: Josh at November 23, 2005 06:19 PMI do not seek to belittle the argument, but "Limitless states of mind" and references to inner space sounds more than a little like the psychadelic revolution or 3 decades past. Only this time with Arthur C Clarke at the wheel instead of Ken Kesey. (alert: poster is now dating himself...)
The basic problem with the exponentially increasing technology argument is that the technological advancements we are making now require exponentially more basic science research and development than they did in the past. Theoretical limits of silicon computing are being approached, antibiotic discovery is approaching the limits of what we can do to kill a bug without killing us etc.
Technology won't stop moving forward, but the investment needed to move it forward increases exponentially with advancement.
Posted by: Chris Johnson at April 14, 2006 03:11 PM