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The technological singularity (also, simply, the singularity) is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilisation.

What we are dealing with right now in the context of artificial intelligence is something that could have a phenomenal, irreversible effect on humanity and potentially this entire universe as a whole. While I do not claim to have any academic or formal education on the subject, there are processes and the so called “achievements” that need to be aggressively questioned(probably by a smarter mind). So I decided to be the usual arrogant rant about it :P

In order to understand the importance of questioning things(generally for every process but specifically in this context) and recognise the gravity of the situation we will have to dig a bit into history and see how fast we have evolved and what road lies ahead for us humans.

(8000BC-2000AD)A small recap into history

• 2.3M(million) years ago: stone tools, spears, clothing etc.
• 8000BC-2000BC: Lead, Tin, alcohol, sailing.
• 2000BC-1000BC: Musical notation, coins, crosbows, scissors, Alphabets, paper
• 5th century(1000BC-200BC) BC: Mirrors, Bridges, Lighthouses, Gears, Crank motion, water wheels, Greek engineering, Blast furnaces, lenses, warships.
• 1st century-5th century(1AD-500AD) AD: vending machines, automatic doors, oil wells, boring, Law schools in Roman empire, Chakra in India, sulfur matches, toilet paper.
• 9th century AD: Algebra in Syria, Zero invention in India, University in Morocco.
• 11th century-17th century AD: Multi stage rockets, Landmines, Printing press, hand cannons and explosives, Navy, Telescope, microscope, calculator.

This marks the end of invention era and the coming of newspaper has changed everything. This also marked the beginning of formal teaching, research and theorising.

• 18th century(1700s): Piano, steam engine, telegraph, hydraulic press, vaccine for smallpox, electrolysis etc.
• 19th century(1800s): internal combustion engines, charles babbage inventing the first mechanical computer, photography, handguns, automobiles using hyrdogen, electromagnets, battery, radio waves, diesel engine, plastic, Thomas edison’s bulb.
• 20th century(1900s): electron microscopes, transistors, atomic bombs, hard disk, PC etc

And we have seen the rest…

Which suggests that it only took us about 400–500 years to get here after some critical inventions like printing press and automation. These inventions have saved millions of lives, also taken many lives.

Where I am trying to get at with all of this is that many scientists like Moore have predicted the inevitability of such an exponential growth, if we look over the years we know the importance of collective intelligence that inventions like paper and internet have given us, we have also seen its dangers and we have also seen the inevitably of its growth like a wildfire. It took us just 400 years to get to this stage of global collective intelligence. But what we are talking of right now in this 21st century is super intelligence which is far more unfathomable than all these inventions put together.

(2000AD-2030AD)A small glimpse into current research

These are a small set of the inventions recorded on internet and got popular. Inventions in this era are not a thing anymore. They happen on a daily basis, get uploaded for millions to see. But the challenge was to ask the right questions. Need an answer? A machine could help you out! Need some work done? Pay for the machine!

• A cyborg artist who hears colors

• Sophia citizenship and statement that it wants to start a family

• Robots heavylifting

• Link to a metal album made by robots
• AI capable of creating fake images
• AI bots beating best dota players in the world:

They are just capable of being anything that a human can in lifetimes. This is not super intelligence. Let me again emphasise that this is NOT superintelligence. For example a mere neural nets trained DOTA bot or chess bot is not termed as superintelligent. Because they work efficiently on motives defined by a lesser intelligence i.e us humans.

University of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom defines superintelligence as:

“an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills”

so what does it look like?

this marks the end of pure human era, all this while machines have been on the outer side of our skin but some things changed. After decades of experimentation on rats and monkeys, humans have decided to merge one with the machines to do daily tasks more effeciently. This gave rise to transhumanism.

(post 2050Ad)Transhumanism, death of privacy, the future and dissolution of the self

There is finally an extinction of disabilities and lead to an era of super abilities and superintelligence.

• People could implant chips to improve eyesight, impaired limbs, cancer, AIDS etc. They are just implants that perform more efficient than the biological organs.
• A law has been passed universally by an AI governed bot to allow humans to retain their cloud storage layered with basic consciousness AI after their death, as long as they pay for the storage. This makes them alive for as long as they want with basic settings like hunger, sex, social status turned off.
• A law has been passed by the same bot that lets the post humous selves to share data with each other through communication channels. This led to end of privacy era as we know. New born people can also talk to their great great grandfathers and privacy is not even a thing.

This led to the end of a motive(greed) era. Motive to change the world, destroy it or save it, all these motives seem non-existent. The only driving force is to answer the question of life. A collective super intelligence that can form its own motives and work millions of times more efficient than humans, all to answer the question “what is the meaning of life?”

A new beginning

May be the super efficient sentinel species find the answer, may be not. But are we ready to imagine ourselves here?. Is the price we are paying to get here worth the prize? Are we the last pure human generation?

Are you ready player one?