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I have never come across a well-defined concept of "The Singularity." Society still doesn't agree on how to compare intelligence between humans. What is the m

I have never come across a well-defined concept of "The Singularity." Society still doesn't agree on how to compare intelligence between humans. What is the measurement approach that I could use to determine if Kurzweil is correct?

needz 10y ago
The definition I use is when a computer is smart enough to design its own successor.
K0SM0S 10y ago
The concept of "singularity" in this context is so much out there that basically, should it happen, it will be obvious. Think the Matrix, deus ex machina (literal, proper meaning), Skynet (whether benevolent or not), Wall-E, etc. More formally it's the acceleration of machine intelligence and subsequent capabilities to such an extent that Star Trek would look downright ancient compared to this post-singularity reality (save for the warp-space travel part, but interestingly enough a "decent AI" would probably deem it much more prioritary than humans to colonize outer space in order to ensure its own survival, and hopefully ours as well if our relationship is one of cooperation/parasitism). It is a fascinating concept, but it depicts such an unprecendented discontinuity in history, a "civilizational breakthrough" that's so dramatic in scope, that there's no historical ground to it whatsoever over ten millenia. Which makes the concept of singularity somewhat of a belief, much less "not a question of if but when" than, say, self-driving cars, quantum computing or even the human-level AI threshold itself. Nock Bostrom "Superintelligence" book is a bit tedious and descritive, but I think it does a much better job than Kurzveil's rather pop-oriented publications (though I praise him for helping tech be known and sought after by the general public, it's exactly what we need to scale).
ericras 10y ago
Kurzweil has a fantastically vague definition: the point after which things are so different we can't presently comprehend the magnitude of change.
- jankedeen 10y ago
  That is sort of the Vingean 'mystery' take. If you enjoy his writing style and SF 'Marooned in Real Time' is worth a read.
_rpd 10y ago
Originally it came from considering the rate of change of technology. The rate of change of technology is generally considered to be increasing. Since the rate of change of technology seems to be increased by new technology, it is perhaps exponentially increasing. It's natural to ask: what is the maximum rate of change of technology? If that maximum is very high, then there may come a time when the change in technology that used to take years will take days, then hours, then just minutes, etc. The Singularity is the theoretical time that is asymptotic to the technology curve as the rate of change of technology tends to infinity. In less mathematical language, it is the day when hundreds of years of technology change occurs in hundreds of minutes - sometimes imagined as AI researchers working in time-accelerated virtual environments.

needz 10y ago

The definition I use is when a computer is smart enough to design its own successor.

K0SM0S 10y ago

The concept of "singularity" in this context is so much out there that basically, should it happen, it will be obvious. Think the Matrix, deus ex machina (literal, proper meaning), Skynet (whether benevolent or not), Wall-E, etc. More formally it's the acceleration of machine intelligence and subsequent capabilities to such an extent that Star Trek would look downright ancient compared to this post-singularity reality (save for the warp-space travel part, but interestingly enough a "decent AI" would probably deem it much more prioritary than humans to colonize outer space in order to ensure its own survival, and hopefully ours as well if our relationship is one of cooperation/parasitism). It is a fascinating concept, but it depicts such an unprecendented discontinuity in history, a "civilizational breakthrough" that's so dramatic in scope, that there's no historical ground to it whatsoever over ten millenia. Which makes the concept of singularity somewhat of a belief, much less "not a question of if but when" than, say, self-driving cars, quantum computing or even the human-level AI threshold itself. Nock Bostrom "Superintelligence" book is a bit tedious and descritive, but I think it does a much better job than Kurzveil's rather pop-oriented publications (though I praise him for helping tech be known and sought after by the general public, it's exactly what we need to scale).

ericras 10y ago

Kurzweil has a fantastically vague definition: the point after which things are so different we can't presently comprehend the magnitude of change.

jankedeen 10y ago
That is sort of the Vingean 'mystery' take. If you enjoy his writing style and SF 'Marooned in Real Time' is worth a read.

_rpd 10y ago

Originally it came from considering the rate of change of technology. The rate of change of technology is generally considered to be increasing. Since the rate of change of technology seems to be increased by new technology, it is perhaps exponentially increasing. It's natural to ask: what is the maximum rate of change of technology? If that maximum is very high, then there may come a time when the change in technology that used to take years will take days, then hours, then just minutes, etc. The Singularity is the theoretical time that is asymptotic to the technology curve as the rate of change of technology tends to infinity. In less mathematical language, it is the day when hundreds of years of technology change occurs in hundreds of minutes - sometimes imagined as AI researchers working in time-accelerated virtual environments.