11 ms·

The Singularity in Our Past

62 points by evgenit 16y ago

jakerocheleau 16y ago
I'm thinking it's more about the evolution of technology. Just because we've had the resources and knowledge to consider ourselves (or even society itself) in a "singularity" doesn't mean it's manifest physically yet. I think quantum computing and the ever-expanding OAuth connections we're seeing will help to bring everybody, literally, closer. Within the next few years I can realistically see a direct connection to a technological singularity. From there I can't even imagine what life on Earth will be like
- apu 16y ago
  ...ever-expanding OAuth connections... Uh, what? How does OAuth have anything to do with the singularity?
  - Helianthus16 16y ago
    How will we know the singularity is here unless we can authenticate its identity?
iwr 16y ago
The idea is that the Singularity would be a point in time where the totality of human expert knowledge would be insufficient to comprehend what an AI (or an AI-designed AI) would be capable of comprehending. If we think human-level AI is possible, then superhuman AI would also be possible. Note, though, that while not infinite, human cognition is complete, that is, a human or group of humans is only limited by time or resources. No matter how much time we have; a dog will never stumble upon quantum mechanics. But given enough time, a human being can construct an expert knowledge repository, even though he himself is unable to understand some of the intermediary steps or details. Now, this is where Singularity takes a turn to religion. Some people believe "it" to a future AI with enough physical means to be indistinguishable from a god. Not just a god, but one single God.
- Avshalom 16y ago
  The idea is that the Singularity is whatever version of "in the future things will be different" that a given author thinks will get them an audience.
- VladRussian 16y ago
  >a dog will never stumble upon quantum mechanics i'm always amazed by such blatant anthropo-glorifing-centric statements which imply as obvious facts the doubtful things like this: - that dog's brain has much less processing power. The sheer size difference is many times adjusted by efficiency difference (where human's one is less efficient) - that quantum mechanics is a super-achievement, replication of which is a mark of higher intelligence. To me the ugliness of QM is bordering on a shame for human intelligence.
  - derefr 16y ago
    Why is quantum mechanics ugly?
    - orangecat 16y ago
      The wavefunction collapse in the Copenhagen interpretation is ugly. Many-worlds is elegant, as long as you're willing to accept googols of unobservable near-duplicates of yourself.
      - VladRussian 16y ago
        >The wavefunction collapse in the Copenhagen interpretation is ugly thank you. i thought i'm alone here. Personally to me this one is an example of the broader method of accepting postulates as-is. It is an ugly shame that makes science into religion. Another one is doubling-down on dimensions and adding one more on top of it :) I mean it looks pretty logical and reasonably motivated, yet not everything true that is logical. "The sleep of reason produces monsters". Well, active work of human reason seems to produce even bigger monsters :)
  - Helianthus16 16y ago
cicada 16y ago
Confusions like this are the reason why I favor the intelligence explosion flavour of the singularity ( http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools ) -- there's no confusion as to whether we've already had one. The industrial revolution, while revolutionary, did not improve on the intelligence that invented it. The single most important part about the singularity is that the technology does improve on the intelligence that invented it.
- celoyd 16y ago
  The industrial revolution, while revolutionary, did not improve on the intelligence that invented it. I bet it led to a significant increase in the average IQ. It may not have been a Singularity with a capital S, but it certainly did reflect back on its creators.
  - cicada 16y ago
    The qualitative and quantitative improvements from the flynn effect and the population increase reflected back on humanity as a whole, not the creators of the industrial revolution. This is why we've got accelerating growth, but it's also why the second derivative is still small.
    - celoyd 16y ago
      I agree, but this is orthogonal to the point I was trying to address. mechanical_fish, in a cousin thread, is talking about the same thing I was.
- DaniFong 16y ago
  Perhaps the scientific revolution was not an innovation of a single person, but of the collective entity formed by the proto-scientists of civilization. That conceptual advance, along with communication, tool, and other conceptual advances since that time, have continued to accelerate civilization's collective intelligence. We don't expect the singularity to improve the intelligence of transistors. Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect that previous intelligence explosions of a collective being massively improved the intelligence of the humans comprising it.
T_S_ 16y ago
People seem to underestimate how much engineering will be required for intelligence to interact with the environment successfully. My dog might not be as "intelligent" as me, but he knows a lot more than I do when it comes to information gained through hearing, taste and smell. He has better engineering in many respects. Almost any life form beats me in "intelligence" if you define the test right. There are already theories about how to build universal AI algorithms (check out Marcus Hutter's stuff at http://www.hutter1.net/ http://www.hutter1.net/). These theories are quite an accomplishment, no doubt. But they boil the problem down to one involving sequence prediction. Let's say that particular form of the problem is now "solved". OK now what sequences would you like to present to the algorithm for training? Ones from the environment? Great, but those will take time to collect. Simulated ones? It takes a lot of knowledge to generate good ones. For these reasons, I suspect the Singularity is safe from us for while.
- gwern 16y ago
  > OK now what sequences would you like to present to the algorithm for training? Ones from the environment? Great, but those will take time to collect. Simulated ones? It takes a lot of knowledge to generate good ones. With AIXI and variants, since they are universal predictors, it doesn't really matter what sequences you supply so long as they have some connection. Heck, just your algorithm access to an email server or something.
  - T_S_ 16y ago
    | Heck, just your algorithm access to an email server or something. Then my dog will find the bone faster than AIXI. See what I mean?
    - gwern 16y ago
      The computable versions of AIXI have such enormous constant factors that the indirection of email->real-world is as less than a grain of dust in the Ganges. That indirection's constant factor cost might matter for any feasible AIXI-inspired AI, but since none has yet to be created or even designed, it's hard to say...
VladRussian 16y ago
while human species may be focused on Singularity as a technological event, there is another extremely significant possibility - emergence of human species v2.0, split from inside the current v1.0. It may be helped/facilitated (or may be not) by the technologies - computer, material and/or bio-genetical. The technological singularity, Skynet style, is possibly just crutches for the human v1.0 where is v2.0 may possibly just skip this step.
jerf 16y ago
Reading over the comments up to this point, this is a definition debate, not an intelligent conversation. By some useful readings of the word "singularity", they are indeed relative and there are several in our past, and quite likely several in our future. Looking back at the prognostications in 1980 one can fruitfully argue that we've been through one just since then. By other useful readings of the word "singularity", it lies solely in the future if it exists or can exist at all. Arguing which definition is "true" is wrong; definitions can't really true or false, they are simply useful or not useful, nor do they have any direct impact on reality.
s_jambo 16y ago
In order to move this away from debate about semantics I think this meshes nicely with an alternative view of intelligence. Specifically Human intelligence as a social endeavour rather than an individual struggle. If you look at intelligence in that light we have gone through a huge transformation with the printing press, industrial revolution and now internet revolution. Basically if you think of it as each human brain just being a small component able to try out new ideas then spread those ideas... Well that massive human spanning brain is undergoing massive ongoing upgrades in memory capacity and speed of communication.
troystribling 16y ago
In Henery Adams's audio biography 'The Education of Henry Adams'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams (i.e. Henery Adams the grandson of John Quincy Adams was a 19'th century historian). He discusses his theory of history. In his model history is driven by the law of Acceleration which discribes the exponential growth of energy consumption through the 19'th century http://www.bartleby.com/159/34.html http://www.bartleby.com/159/34.html. Exponential growth in energy consumption was viewed as unsustainable as early as the 1860's but Henry Adams noted that it continued throughout his life up until the time he wrote his biography in 1904 and he saw no end to it.
- wazoox 16y ago
  > Exponential growth in energy consumption was viewed as unsustainable as early as the 1860's but Henry Adams noted that it continued throughout his life up until the time he wrote his biography in 1904 and he saw no end to it. We're seeing it now, however.
  - swombat 16y ago
    The point of the story above is that people in Henry's time were seeing it too - and yet it didn't happen.
    - wazoox 16y ago
      They were seeing it as not sustainable, while we're actually seeing the first hiccups. As you may now know, finally the EIA admitted in its latest report that peak oil already occurred : http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=422 http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=422 quote :"If governments put in place the energy and climate policies to which they have committed themselves, then our analysis suggests that crude oil production has probably already peaked." Of course this didn't make the news. Keep on the denial, people.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
madair 16y ago
Ahahaha, life lessons from someone who thinks Dexter is worthy of intellectual consideration. And who gives The Republic serious consideration for the present?...Oh i see you're speaking in Ann Arbour tomorrow, of course you do, just like that "The Republic Is America and The Republic Is Awesome" lecture that is taught in full seriousness in the Yale online courses...now it makes sense, the delusions of apparently omnipotent wealth. So much high school lovin tonight, what's up pups?!

62 points by evgenit 16y ago

I'm thinking it's more about the evolution of technology. Just because we've had the resources and knowledge to consider ourselves (or even society itself) in a "singularity" doesn't mean it's manifest physically yet. I think quantum computing and the ever-expanding OAuth connections we're seeing will help to bring everybody, literally, closer. Within the next few years I can realistically see a direct connection to a technological singularity. From there I can't even imagine what life on Earth will be like

apu 16y ago
...ever-expanding OAuth connections... Uh, what? How does OAuth have anything to do with the singularity?
- Helianthus16 16y ago
  How will we know the singularity is here unless we can authenticate its identity?

iwr 16y ago

The idea is that the Singularity would be a point in time where the totality of human expert knowledge would be insufficient to comprehend what an AI (or an AI-designed AI) would be capable of comprehending. If we think human-level AI is possible, then superhuman AI would also be possible. Note, though, that while not infinite, human cognition is complete, that is, a human or group of humans is only limited by time or resources. No matter how much time we have; a dog will never stumble upon quantum mechanics. But given enough time, a human being can construct an expert knowledge repository, even though he himself is unable to understand some of the intermediary steps or details. Now, this is where Singularity takes a turn to religion. Some people believe "it" to a future AI with enough physical means to be indistinguishable from a god. Not just a god, but one single God.

Avshalom 16y ago
The idea is that the Singularity is whatever version of "in the future things will be different" that a given author thinks will get them an audience.
VladRussian 16y ago
>a dog will never stumble upon quantum mechanics i'm always amazed by such blatant anthropo-glorifing-centric statements which imply as obvious facts the doubtful things like this: - that dog's brain has much less processing power. The sheer size difference is many times adjusted by efficiency difference (where human's one is less efficient) - that quantum mechanics is a super-achievement, replication of which is a mark of higher intelligence. To me the ugliness of QM is bordering on a shame for human intelligence.
- derefr 16y ago
  Why is quantum mechanics ugly?
  - orangecat 16y ago
    The wavefunction collapse in the Copenhagen interpretation is ugly. Many-worlds is elegant, as long as you're willing to accept googols of unobservable near-duplicates of yourself.
    - VladRussian 16y ago
      >The wavefunction collapse in the Copenhagen interpretation is ugly thank you. i thought i'm alone here. Personally to me this one is an example of the broader method of accepting postulates as-is. It is an ugly shame that makes science into religion. Another one is doubling-down on dimensions and adding one more on top of it :) I mean it looks pretty logical and reasonably motivated, yet not everything true that is logical. "The sleep of reason produces monsters". Well, active work of human reason seems to produce even bigger monsters :)
- Helianthus16 16y ago

cicada 16y ago

Confusions like this are the reason why I favor the intelligence explosion flavour of the singularity ( http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools ) -- there's no confusion as to whether we've already had one. The industrial revolution, while revolutionary, did not improve on the intelligence that invented it. The single most important part about the singularity is that the technology does improve on the intelligence that invented it.

celoyd 16y ago
The industrial revolution, while revolutionary, did not improve on the intelligence that invented it. I bet it led to a significant increase in the average IQ. It may not have been a Singularity with a capital S, but it certainly did reflect back on its creators.
- cicada 16y ago
  The qualitative and quantitative improvements from the flynn effect and the population increase reflected back on humanity as a whole, not the creators of the industrial revolution. This is why we've got accelerating growth, but it's also why the second derivative is still small.
  - celoyd 16y ago
    I agree, but this is orthogonal to the point I was trying to address. mechanical_fish, in a cousin thread, is talking about the same thing I was.
DaniFong 16y ago
Perhaps the scientific revolution was not an innovation of a single person, but of the collective entity formed by the proto-scientists of civilization. That conceptual advance, along with communication, tool, and other conceptual advances since that time, have continued to accelerate civilization's collective intelligence. We don't expect the singularity to improve the intelligence of transistors. Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect that previous intelligence explosions of a collective being massively improved the intelligence of the humans comprising it.

T_S_ 16y ago

People seem to underestimate how much engineering will be required for intelligence to interact with the environment successfully. My dog might not be as "intelligent" as me, but he knows a lot more than I do when it comes to information gained through hearing, taste and smell. He has better engineering in many respects. Almost any life form beats me in "intelligence" if you define the test right. There are already theories about how to build universal AI algorithms (check out Marcus Hutter's stuff at http://www.hutter1.net/ http://www.hutter1.net/). These theories are quite an accomplishment, no doubt. But they boil the problem down to one involving sequence prediction. Let's say that particular form of the problem is now "solved". OK now what sequences would you like to present to the algorithm for training? Ones from the environment? Great, but those will take time to collect. Simulated ones? It takes a lot of knowledge to generate good ones. For these reasons, I suspect the Singularity is safe from us for while.

gwern 16y ago
> OK now what sequences would you like to present to the algorithm for training? Ones from the environment? Great, but those will take time to collect. Simulated ones? It takes a lot of knowledge to generate good ones. With AIXI and variants, since they are universal predictors, it doesn't really matter what sequences you supply so long as they have some connection. Heck, just your algorithm access to an email server or something.
- T_S_ 16y ago
  | Heck, just your algorithm access to an email server or something. Then my dog will find the bone faster than AIXI. See what I mean?
  - gwern 16y ago
    The computable versions of AIXI have such enormous constant factors that the indirection of email->real-world is as less than a grain of dust in the Ganges. That indirection's constant factor cost might matter for any feasible AIXI-inspired AI, but since none has yet to be created or even designed, it's hard to say...

VladRussian 16y ago

while human species may be focused on Singularity as a technological event, there is another extremely significant possibility - emergence of human species v2.0, split from inside the current v1.0. It may be helped/facilitated (or may be not) by the technologies - computer, material and/or bio-genetical. The technological singularity, Skynet style, is possibly just crutches for the human v1.0 where is v2.0 may possibly just skip this step.

jerf 16y ago

Reading over the comments up to this point, this is a definition debate, not an intelligent conversation. By some useful readings of the word "singularity", they are indeed relative and there are several in our past, and quite likely several in our future. Looking back at the prognostications in 1980 one can fruitfully argue that we've been through one just since then. By other useful readings of the word "singularity", it lies solely in the future if it exists or can exist at all. Arguing which definition is "true" is wrong; definitions can't really true or false, they are simply useful or not useful, nor do they have any direct impact on reality.

s_jambo 16y ago

In order to move this away from debate about semantics I think this meshes nicely with an alternative view of intelligence. Specifically Human intelligence as a social endeavour rather than an individual struggle. If you look at intelligence in that light we have gone through a huge transformation with the printing press, industrial revolution and now internet revolution. Basically if you think of it as each human brain just being a small component able to try out new ideas then spread those ideas... Well that massive human spanning brain is undergoing massive ongoing upgrades in memory capacity and speed of communication.

troystribling 16y ago

In Henery Adams's audio biography 'The Education of Henry Adams'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams (i.e. Henery Adams the grandson of John Quincy Adams was a 19'th century historian). He discusses his theory of history. In his model history is driven by the law of Acceleration which discribes the exponential growth of energy consumption through the 19'th century http://www.bartleby.com/159/34.html http://www.bartleby.com/159/34.html. Exponential growth in energy consumption was viewed as unsustainable as early as the 1860's but Henry Adams noted that it continued throughout his life up until the time he wrote his biography in 1904 and he saw no end to it.

wazoox 16y ago
> Exponential growth in energy consumption was viewed as unsustainable as early as the 1860's but Henry Adams noted that it continued throughout his life up until the time he wrote his biography in 1904 and he saw no end to it. We're seeing it now, however.
- swombat 16y ago
  The point of the story above is that people in Henry's time were seeing it too - and yet it didn't happen.
  - wazoox 16y ago
    They were seeing it as not sustainable, while we're actually seeing the first hiccups. As you may now know, finally the EIA admitted in its latest report that peak oil already occurred : http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=422 http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=422 quote :"If governments put in place the energy and climate policies to which they have committed themselves, then our analysis suggests that crude oil production has probably already peaked." Of course this didn't make the news. Keep on the denial, people.
    - rbanffy 16y ago

madair 16y ago

Ahahaha, life lessons from someone who thinks Dexter is worthy of intellectual consideration. And who gives The Republic serious consideration for the present?...Oh i see you're speaking in Ann Arbour tomorrow, of course you do, just like that "The Republic Is America and The Republic Is Awesome" lecture that is taught in full seriousness in the Yale online courses...now it makes sense, the delusions of apparently omnipotent wealth. So much high school lovin tonight, what's up pups?!