The technological singularity (also, simply, the singularity) is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence (ASI) will abruptly trigger runaway.
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They believe that a super-intelligent AI, if kept on a tight leash, could analyze and expose many of the wonders of the world for us. Einstein, after all, was a remarkable genius who has revolutionized our understanding of physics. Already we see how AI is starting to change the ways in which we think about ourselves.
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Today, after nearly twenty years of further development, human chess masters can no longer beat on their own even an AI running on a laptop computer. But after his defeat, Kasparov has created a new kind of chess contests: In this sort of a collaboration, the computer provides rapid computations of possible moves, and suggests several to the human player. Its human compatriot needs to pick the best option, to understand their opponents and to throw them off balance. Together, the two create a centaur: We see, then that AI has already forced chess players to reconsider their humanity and their game.
In the next few decades we can expect a similar singularity to occur in many other games, professions and other fields that were previously conserved for human beings only. Some humans will struggle against the AI. Others will ignore it. Both these approaches will prove disastrous, since when the AI will become capable than human beings, both the strugglers and the ignorant will remain behind.
Others will realize that the only way to success lies in collaboration with the computers. They will help computers learn and will direct their growth and learning. Those people will be the centaurs of the future. In Brief Trying to get children to understand artificial intelligence is a feat in its own right.
Explaining how it could one day become smarter than us is an entirely different challenge. Roey Tzezana Last updated: March 3, at 5: In the s, public figures such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk expressed concern that full artificial intelligence could result in human extinction. Although technological progress has been accelerating, it has been limited by the basic intelligence of the human brain, which has not, according to Paul R.
Ehrlich , changed significantly for millennia. Such an AI is referred to as Seed AI [12] [13] because if an AI were created with engineering capabilities that matched or surpassed those of its human creators, it would have the potential to autonomously improve its own software and hardware or design an even more capable machine. This more capable machine could then go on to design a machine of yet greater capability. These iterations of recursive self-improvement could accelerate, potentially allowing enormous qualitative change before any upper limits imposed by the laws of physics or theoretical computation set in.
It is speculated that over many iterations, such an AI would far surpass human cognitive abilities. Computer scientist Vernor Vinge said in his essay "The Coming Technological Singularity" that this would signal the end of the human era, as the new superintelligence would continue to upgrade itself and would advance technologically at an incomprehensible rate.
The intelligence explosion is a possible outcome of humanity building artificial general intelligence AGI. AGI would be capable of recursive self-improvement leading to rapid emergence of ASI artificial superintelligence , the limits of which are unknown, at the time of the technological singularity. Good speculated in that artificial general intelligence might bring about an intelligence explosion. He speculated on the effects of superhuman machines, should they ever be invented: Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever.
Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. Good's scenario runs as follows: This superintelligent machine then designs an even more capable machine, or re-writes its own software to become even more intelligent; this even more capable machine then goes on to design a machine of yet greater capability, and so on. These iterations of recursive self-improvement accelerate, allowing enormous qualitative change before any upper limits imposed by the laws of physics or theoretical computation set in.
A superintelligence, hyperintelligence, or superhuman intelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds.
John von Neumann, Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil define the concept in terms of the technological creation of super intelligence. They argue that it is difficult or impossible for present-day humans to predict what human beings' lives would be like in a post-singularity world. Technology forecasters and researchers disagree about if or when human intelligence is likely to be surpassed. Some argue that advances in artificial intelligence AI will probably result in general reasoning systems that lack human cognitive limitations. Others believe that humans will evolve or directly modify their biology so as to achieve radically greater intelligence.
A number of futures studies scenarios combine elements from both of these possibilities, suggesting that humans are likely to interface with computers , or upload their minds to computers , in a way that enables substantial intelligence amplification. Some writers use "the singularity" in a broader way to refer to any radical changes in our society brought about by new technologies such as molecular nanotechnology , [16] [17] [18] although Vinge and other writers specifically state that without superintelligence, such changes would not qualify as a true singularity. Many prominent technologists and academics dispute the plausibility of a technological singularity, including Paul Allen , Jeff Hawkins , John Holland , Jaron Lanier , and Gordon Moore , whose law is often cited in support of the concept.
Most proposed methods for creating superhuman or transhuman minds fall into one of two categories: The means speculated to produce intelligence augmentation are numerous, and include bioengineering , genetic engineering , nootropic drugs, AI assistants, direct brain—computer interfaces and mind uploading.
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The existence of multiple paths to an intelligence explosion makes a singularity more likely; for a singularity to not occur they would all have to fail. Hanson is skeptical of human intelligence augmentation, writing that once one has exhausted the "low-hanging fruit" of easy methods for increasing human intelligence, further improvements will become increasingly difficult to find. Despite the numerous speculated means for amplifying human intelligence, non-human artificial intelligence specifically seed AI is the most popular option for organizations [ which?
Whether or not an intelligence explosion occurs depends on three factors. Contrariwise, as the intelligences become more advanced, further advances will become more and more complicated, possibly overcoming the advantage of increased intelligence. Each improvement must be able to beget at least one more improvement, on average, for the singularity to continue.
Finally the laws of physics will eventually prevent any further improvements. There are two logically independent, but mutually reinforcing causes of intelligence improvements: On the other hand, most AI researchers [ who? A email survey of authors with publications at the NIPS and ICML machine learning conferences asked them about the chance of an intelligence explosion. Both for human and artificial intelligence, hardware improvements increase the rate of future hardware improvements. Oversimplified, [27] Moore's Law suggests that if the first doubling of speed took 18 months, the second would take 18 subjective months; or 9 external months, whereafter, four months, two months, and so on towards a speed singularity.
Hawkins [ citation needed ] , responding to Good, argued that the upper limit is relatively low;. Belief in this idea is based on a naive understanding of what intelligence is. As an analogy, imagine we had a computer that could design new computers chips, systems, and software faster than itself. Would such a computer lead to infinitely fast computers or even computers that were faster than anything humans could ever build? It might accelerate the rate of improvements for a while, but in the end there are limits to how big and fast computers can be.
We would end up in the same place; we'd just get there a bit faster. There would be no singularity. Whereas if it were a lot higher than current human levels of intelligence, the effects of the singularity would be great enough as to be indistinguishable to humans from a singularity with an upper limit. For example, if the speed of thought could be increased a million-fold, a subjective year would pass in 30 physical seconds.
It is difficult to directly compare silicon -based hardware with neurons. But Berglas notes that computer speech recognition is approaching human capabilities, and that this capability seems to require 0. This analogy suggests that modern computer hardware is within a few orders of magnitude of being as powerful as the human brain. The exponential growth in computing technology suggested by Moore's law is commonly cited as a reason to expect a singularity in the relatively near future, and a number of authors have proposed generalizations of Moore's law.
Computer scientist and futurist Hans Moravec proposed in a book [29] that the exponential growth curve could be extended back through earlier computing technologies prior to the integrated circuit. Ray Kurzweil postulates a law of accelerating returns in which the speed of technological change and more generally, all evolutionary processes [30] increases exponentially, generalizing Moore's law in the same manner as Moravec's proposal, and also including material technology especially as applied to nanotechnology , medical technology and others.
Kurzweil reserves the term "singularity" for a rapid increase in artificial intelligence as opposed to other technologies , writing for example that "The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine". Some singularity proponents argue its inevitability through extrapolation of past trends, especially those pertaining to shortening gaps between improvements to technology.
In one of the first uses of the term "singularity" in the context of technological progress, Stanislaw Ulam tells of a conversation with John von Neumann about accelerating change:. One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.
Kurzweil claims that technological progress follows a pattern of exponential growth , following what he calls the " law of accelerating returns ". Whenever technology approaches a barrier, Kurzweil writes, new technologies will surmount it. He predicts paradigm shifts will become increasingly common, leading to "technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history".
Oft-cited dangers include those commonly associated with molecular nanotechnology and genetic engineering. These threats are major issues for both singularity advocates and critics, and were the subject of Bill Joy 's Wired magazine article " Why the future doesn't need us ". Some intelligence technologies, like "seed AI", [12] [13] may also have the potential to make themselves more efficient, not just faster, by modifying their source code.
These improvements would make further improvements possible, which would make further improvements possible, and so on. The mechanism for a recursively self-improving set of algorithms differs from an increase in raw computation speed in two ways. First, it does not require external influence: While speed increases seem to be only a quantitative difference from human intelligence, actual algorithm improvements would be qualitatively different. Eliezer Yudkowsky compares it to the changes that human intelligence brought: Similarly, the evolution of life had been a massive departure and acceleration from the previous geological rates of change, and improved intelligence could cause change to be as different again.
There are substantial dangers associated with an intelligence explosion singularity originating from a recursively self-improving set of algorithms. First, the goal structure of the AI may not be invariant under self-improvement, potentially causing the AI to optimise for something other than was intended.
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While not actively malicious, there is no reason to think that AIs would actively promote human goals unless they could be programmed as such, and if not, might use the resources currently used to support mankind to promote its own goals, causing human extinction. Carl Shulman and Anders Sandberg suggest that algorithm improvements may be the limiting factor for a singularity because whereas hardware efficiency tends to improve at a steady pace, software innovations are more unpredictable and may be bottlenecked by serial, cumulative research.
They suggest that in the case of a software-limited singularity, intelligence explosion would actually become more likely than with a hardware-limited singularity, because in the software-limited case, once human-level AI was developed, it could run serially on very fast hardware, and the abundance of cheap hardware would make AI research less constrained. Some critics assert that no computer or machine will ever achieve human intelligence , while others hold that the definition of intelligence is irrelevant if the net result is the same.
There is not the slightest reason to believe in a coming singularity. The fact that you can visualize a future in your imagination is not evidence that it is likely or even possible. Look at domed cities, jet-pack commuting, underwater cities, mile-high buildings, and nuclear-powered automobiles—all staples of futuristic fantasies when I was a child that have never arrived.
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Sheer processing power is not a pixie dust that magically solves all your problems. University of California, Berkeley , philosophy professor John Searle writes:. We design them to behave as if they had certain sorts of psychology , but there is no psychological reality to the corresponding processes or behavior. Martin Ford in The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future [50] postulates a "technology paradox" in that before the singularity could occur most routine jobs in the economy would be automated, since this would require a level of technology inferior to that of the singularity.
This would cause massive unemployment and plummeting consumer demand, which in turn would destroy the incentive to invest in the technologies that would be required to bring about the Singularity. Job displacement is increasingly no longer limited to work traditionally considered to be "routine". Theodore Modis [52] [53] and Jonathan Huebner [54] argue that the rate of technological innovation has not only ceased to rise, but is actually now declining. Evidence for this decline is that the rise in computer clock rates is slowing, even while Moore's prediction of exponentially increasing circuit density continues to hold.
This is due to excessive heat build-up from the chip, which cannot be dissipated quickly enough to prevent the chip from melting when operating at higher speeds. Advancements in speed may be possible in the future by virtue of more power-efficient CPU designs and multi-cell processors. Others [56] propose that other "singularities" can be found through analysis of trends in world population , world gross domestic product , and other indices.
Andrey Korotayev and others argue that historical hyperbolic growth curves can be attributed to feedback loops that ceased to affect global trends in the s, and thus hyperbolic growth should not be expected in the future. In a detailed empirical accounting, The Progress of Computing , William Nordhaus argued that, prior to , computers followed the much slower growth of a traditional industrial economy, thus rejecting extrapolations of Moore's law to 19th-century computers.
In a paper, Schmidhuber stated that the frequency of subjectively "notable events" appears to be approaching a 21st-century singularity, but cautioned readers to take such plots of subjective events with a grain of salt: Paul Allen argues the opposite of accelerating returns, the complexity brake; [21] the more progress science makes towards understanding intelligence, the more difficult it becomes to make additional progress. A study of the number of patents shows that human creativity does not show accelerating returns, but in fact, as suggested by Joseph Tainter in his The Collapse of Complex Societies , [61] a law of diminishing returns.
The number of patents per thousand peaked in the period from to , and has been declining since. Jaron Lanier refutes the idea that the Singularity is inevitable. It's not an autonomous process. If you structure a society on not emphasizing individual human agency, it's the same thing operationally as denying people clout, dignity, and self-determination Standard of Living Since the Civil War , points out that measured economic growth has slowed around and slowed even further since the financial crisis of , and argues that the economic data show no trace of a coming Singularity as imagined by mathematician I.
In addition to general criticisms of the singularity concept, several critics have raised issues with Kurzweil's iconic chart. One line of criticism is that a log-log chart of this nature is inherently biased toward a straight-line result. Others identify selection bias in the points that Kurzweil chooses to use.
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For example, biologist PZ Myers points out that many of the early evolutionary "events" were picked arbitrarily. The Economist mocked the concept with a graph extrapolating that the number of blades on a razor, which has increased over the years from one to as many as five, will increase ever-faster to infinity. Dramatic changes in the rate of economic growth have occurred in the past because of some technological advancement. Based on population growth, the economy doubled every , years from the Paleolithic era until the Neolithic Revolution.
The new agricultural economy doubled every years, a remarkable increase. If the rise of superhuman intelligence causes a similar revolution, argues Robin Hanson, one would expect the economy to double at least quarterly and possibly on a weekly basis. The term "technological singularity" reflects the idea that such change may happen suddenly, and that it is difficult to predict how the resulting new world would operate. While the technological singularity is usually seen as a sudden event, some scholars argue the current speed of change already fits this description.
Digital technology has infiltrated the fabric of human society to a degree of indisputable and often life-sustaining dependence. We spend most of our waking time communicating through digitally mediated channels With one in three marriages in America beginning online, digital algorithms are also taking a role in human pair bonding and reproduction". The article argues that from the perspective of the evolution , several previous Major Transitions in Evolution have transformed life through innovations in information storage and replication RNA , DNA , multicellularity , and culture and language.
In the current stage of life's evolution, the carbon-based biosphere has generated a cognitive system humans capable of creating technology that will result in a comparable evolutionary transition. The digital information created by humans has reached a similar magnitude to biological information in the biosphere. Since the s, "the quantity of digital information stored has doubled about every 2. In biological terms, there are 7.
The digital realm stored times more information than this in The total amount of DNA contained in all of the cells on Earth is estimated to be about 5. This would represent a doubling of the amount of information stored in the biosphere across a total time period of just years".
The goal was to discuss the potential impact of the hypothetical possibility that robots could become self-sufficient and able to make their own decisions. They discussed the extent to which computers and robots might be able to acquire autonomy , and to what degree they could use such abilities to pose threats or hazards. Some machines are programmed with various forms of semi-autonomy, including the ability to locate their own power sources and choose targets to attack with weapons.
Also, some computer viruses can evade elimination and, according to scientists in attendance, could therefore be said to have reached a "cockroach" stage of machine intelligence. The conference attendees noted that self-awareness as depicted in science-fiction is probably unlikely, but that other potential hazards and pitfalls exist.
Berglas notes that there is no direct evolutionary motivation for an AI to be friendly to humans. Evolution has no inherent tendency to produce outcomes valued by humans, and there is little reason to expect an arbitrary optimisation process to promote an outcome desired by mankind, rather than inadvertently leading to an AI behaving in a way not intended by its creators such as Nick Bostrom's whimsical example of an AI which was originally programmed with the goal of manufacturing paper clips, so that when it achieves superintelligence it decides to convert the entire planet into a paper clip manufacturing facility.
Bostrom discusses human extinction scenarios, and lists superintelligence as a possible cause:. When we create the first superintelligent entity, we might make a mistake and give it goals that lead it to annihilate humankind, assuming its enormous intellectual advantage gives it the power to do so.
Technological singularity - Wikipedia
For example, we could mistakenly elevate a subgoal to the status of a supergoal. We tell it to solve a mathematical problem, and it complies by turning all the matter in the solar system into a giant calculating device, in the process killing the person who asked the question. A significant problem is that unfriendly artificial intelligence is likely to be much easier to create than friendly AI. While both require large advances in recursive optimisation process design, friendly AI also requires the ability to make goal structures invariant under self-improvement or the AI could transform itself into something unfriendly and a goal structure that aligns with human values and does not automatically destroy the human race.
An unfriendly AI, on the other hand, can optimize for an arbitrary goal structure, which does not need to be invariant under self-modification. Eliezer Yudkowsky proposed that research be undertaken to produce friendly artificial intelligence in order to address the dangers.