Technological Singularity. What the heck is that?

8 min readJul 21, 2016

Part 2

The Technological Singularity

So the Technological Singularity (if it occurs) will be a tipping point moment in time, driven by the Law of Accelerating Returns, where technology (AI) will reach a stage of intelligence / self-awareness that exceeds human intelligence and ‘takes-off’. Some theorise that this will result in “a ‘runaway reaction’ of self-improvement cycles, with each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an intelligence explosion and resulting in a powerful super-intelligence that would, qualitatively, far surpass all human intelligence”. ³² In short, technology figures out how to make itself better, and takes off on its own in continuous / recursive self-improvement. Screw you humans! And when will this be? Well, here is what some think:

2025 we will have the first computer that is going to be as powerful as the human brain in capacity.

Represented visually (which also shows exponential growth quite well):

2045–50 we will have a computer that will have the capacity of all of the brains in the world. In other words machine intelligence will outperform all of human intelligence combined. Yikes! This would represent a point where progress is so rapid it outstrips humans’ ability to comprehend it…the Technological Singularity.

There are many who have publically expressed concern that Artificial Intelligence is a real danger, including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates. The fear is that a super-intelligence will either enslave humanity for whatever it believes is its purpose or eradicate humanity or all biological life.¹⁴

It may not even be intentional, but the Law of Unintended Consequences. Elon Musk highlighted this when he said “If its [function] is just something like getting rid of e-mail spam and it determines the best way of getting rid of spam is getting rid of humans… “³³ So not so good for us then! Is this what it was like to live through the Cold War with the fear of atomic destruction? Why worry, it may never happen, right? In the shorter term there are concerns that tasks done by humans will be taken over by clever machines and as a result destroy millions of jobs.

On the other side there are people who champion AI and the Technological Singularity as a positive; a means to defeat disease and defeat aging — medical advances will allow us to continuously repair and replace defective components in our bodies (nanomachine organ repair), where technology will enhance and fuse with our biology. For them, the point at which computers reach and exceed human levels of intelligence will not result in our destruction, but will be the resolution of all human problems. It may even bring immortality by ‘uploading’ — “where the human brain (and most probably their state of consciousness) will be replicable in computerized form, leading to (among other things) virtual immortality”. ²² Your consciousness “will be able to go from mechanical body to mechanical body, or virtual paradise to virtual paradise”.⁷

What do I think? I’m not exactly sure. It is always easy in our minds to jump to the extreme of a scale i.e. Heaven (Utopia) or Hell (Dystopia). This is probably because we are used to viewing time and progress as linear in nature. We use what has come before to try and predict our future. Exponential growth is hard to imagine so it is easier to visualise in terms of extremes. As illustrated by Tim Urban, this image represents what it feels like to be on the edge of exponential change…

…but as we can’t see what’s coming, it really just feels like the below image

We have to remember that technology future predictions have often turned out to be futuristic fantasies, reality being different versions of what we had imagined, or no versions at all (where are you flying cars!). I think it comes back to the question of what does it mean to be human, and what do we want it to be? Consciousness, intelligence, self-awareness, emotion? What is human nature? Having the ability to reason, to understand, to make rational choices, and to look at things analytically is important, but it is not the only things that makes us human. Our ability to feel emotions and our consciousness (being aware) are equally, if not more so, important. “Many see the brain as nothing more, and nothing less, than a very powerful computer, honed over millions of years of evolution, to do a fantastic job and hence conclude that all the brain’s functions, including consciousness, can be recreated in a machine. It’s just a matter of time”. ⁷ Yet, for me, I think it is much more, or at least, will take us longer to understand. Case in point is the medical mystery of a forty four year old French father of two who lives a relatively normal, healthy life — despite missing ninety percent of his brain. He only went to the doctor complaining of mild weakness in his left leg. Scientists are wondering “how can someone lose the majority of their neurons and still be aware of themselves and their surroundings?”³¹

While it is always easy to jump to the fear option, many leading voices are skeptical of the doomsday scenario. Even today we think (feel) the world is getting worse. But “by every metric we care about, the world really is getting better. Education, rights, it’s all getting better, and yet there’s the sense that things are getting worse, which is just not true.” ¹⁷ Is it because we find change and disruption so hard to process, both at a micro and meta level? I like Kevin Kelly’s alternative version — Protopia “a state that is better than today than yesterday, although it might be only a little better. Protopia is much much harder to visualize. Because a protopia contains as many new problems as new benefits, this complex interaction of working and broken is very hard to predict”.³⁶ Software is not optimised. Our phones need continuous updates. Kevin says that our future will be continuous updates and upgrades, and as everything and everyone is connecting to the cloud, we will live in an always updating state, where we will all be newbies, all of the time. I’m putting faith in the friendly AI, and championing human agency over technological determinism, and hoping that technology will “free us from scarcity and ensure a prosperous lifestyle for everyone, regardless of where they come from”³⁵, without losing what it is to be human. Just so it is easier to sleep at night, I’m holding onto this, and what Jeff Hawkins says: “We will build machines that are more ‘intelligent’ than humans, and this might happen quickly, but there will be no singularity, no runaway growth in intelligence”.³⁷ All major technological advances have brought fear about job losses and impact to our future. As Tim O’Reilly points out, the true opportunity of technology is that it extends human capability, and we should be imagining new jobs that could only be done with the help of technology. “ If we create an attitude of fear towards technology, we miss the huge opportunity to put it to work solving problems that bedevil us today.”²⁰

Saying that, we need to tread carefully. Our future depends on it. Perhaps Isaac Asimov’s The Three Laws, and the zeroth of robotics — laws intended to prevent artificially intelligent robots from harming humans — might be a good basis to start from?

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws

0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

So in summary, for me, it comes down to….

Exponential technology is here. It is happening and unstoppable. We shouldn’t be afraid of it. Embrace it. But respect its potentials and make it work for and with humanity to create a brighter future for us all. The future is something we create. I agree with what Gerd Leonhard says “we need to spend as much time and investment in the areas of ethics, norms, values and the context as we do on the technology.”¹⁹ Digital ethics needs to be a fundamental aspect of the building blocks of these technologies, and those that create it.