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Singularity in the sense of a black hole refers to where spacetime becomes a single one-dimensional point. As far as I understand the usage in futurism, it is s

Singularity in the sense of a black hole refers to where spacetime becomes a single one-dimensional point. As far as I understand the usage in futurism, it is supposed to be similar, not in that growth is exponential, but asymptotic. The slope becomes infinite when progress is plotted against time, so all of time left to come effectively compresses to a single "state of technology" value. All possible future progress happens instantaneously. This is, of course, not possible, but it's supposed to be an approximation. All progress is not literally instant, but in the "foom" or "hard takeoff" recursive self-improvement scenarios, developments that might have taken millennia in the past now happen in microseconds because the controlling force is just that much smarter than all of the collective powers of human science and engineering. To a human observer, it may as well be instantaneous. To be clear, I still think this is ridiculous and am not endorsing the view, just explaining what I understand the usage to mean.

gnramires 5y ago
Indeed, Rich Sutton argued that we already have been through an exponential phase of self-improvement, we have been using computers to build better computers for decades, and have been using technology to improve our learning and cognition for a long time. Piece this together with: 'Brain efficiency: Much more than you wanted to know' [1] which shows how our brains are incredibly efficient (near theoretical limits) at what they do, it's hard to think a bona fide intelligence singularity is anywhere likely. To quote Feynman, 'There is no miracle people'[2], and analogously 'There are no miracle beings' -- intelligence is built out of systems, and learning, and inference. There's a possibility that the skills relevant to AI success are vastly different from our natural skills, such that although the human brain is highly efficient, it's efficient at the wrong things. That's clearly true in a few ways: we are not so good at arithmetic for example, a small CPU can literally be millions-billions times faster than a human at that. (that's addressed a little in the article as well) I wonder if AI could indeed be vastly better at something like computer programming, mathematics than we are. But there's no singularity (at most a Moore-like law will continue until AI intelligence saturates at a different skillset than our own). [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xwBuoE9p8GE7RAuhd/brain-efficiency-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xwBuoE9p8GE7RAuhd/brain-effi... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIDLcaQVMqw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIDLcaQVMqw
- NineStarPoint 5y ago
  More importantly than what it’s capable of, the human brain is ultimately limited by our inability to increase its complexity. A human brain takes approximately 20 watts of power and uses 3 pounds of material to do its calculations. Even with less efficiency, we can make machines much larger than that. If AGI is possible at all, it should be possible to make an AGI that can have thoughts many times more complex than the human brain can. (Such a large machine might not have the reaction speed of a human, but the evolutionary pressures that required us to be able to quickly change our train of thought in response to danger aren’t a limiting factor to any designed intelligence)
  - tuatoru 5y ago
    Evolutionary pressure to adapt quickly is even more profound in a situation where the rate of change in the environment is proportional to the accumulated quantity of change: the claimed exponential curve of the singularity.
andrewflnr 5y ago
In my understanding (diffeq in college), the singularity in black holes and futurology are both special cases of the relatively old concept of a "singularity" in a function, which is (technically) something like a spot where the function stops being expressible as a series. The most interesting kind is where that happens because it went infinite, but IIRC it can also just not be defined there. Point is, neither Einstein nor Vinge nor especially Kurzweil invented it. :)

gnramires 5y ago

Indeed, Rich Sutton argued that we already have been through an exponential phase of self-improvement, we have been using computers to build better computers for decades, and have been using technology to improve our learning and cognition for a long time. Piece this together with: 'Brain efficiency: Much more than you wanted to know' [1] which shows how our brains are incredibly efficient (near theoretical limits) at what they do, it's hard to think a bona fide intelligence singularity is anywhere likely. To quote Feynman, 'There is no miracle people'[2], and analogously 'There are no miracle beings' -- intelligence is built out of systems, and learning, and inference. There's a possibility that the skills relevant to AI success are vastly different from our natural skills, such that although the human brain is highly efficient, it's efficient at the wrong things. That's clearly true in a few ways: we are not so good at arithmetic for example, a small CPU can literally be millions-billions times faster than a human at that. (that's addressed a little in the article as well) I wonder if AI could indeed be vastly better at something like computer programming, mathematics than we are. But there's no singularity (at most a Moore-like law will continue until AI intelligence saturates at a different skillset than our own). [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xwBuoE9p8GE7RAuhd/brain-efficiency-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xwBuoE9p8GE7RAuhd/brain-effi... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIDLcaQVMqw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIDLcaQVMqw

NineStarPoint 5y ago
More importantly than what it’s capable of, the human brain is ultimately limited by our inability to increase its complexity. A human brain takes approximately 20 watts of power and uses 3 pounds of material to do its calculations. Even with less efficiency, we can make machines much larger than that. If AGI is possible at all, it should be possible to make an AGI that can have thoughts many times more complex than the human brain can. (Such a large machine might not have the reaction speed of a human, but the evolutionary pressures that required us to be able to quickly change our train of thought in response to danger aren’t a limiting factor to any designed intelligence)
- tuatoru 5y ago
  Evolutionary pressure to adapt quickly is even more profound in a situation where the rate of change in the environment is proportional to the accumulated quantity of change: the claimed exponential curve of the singularity.

andrewflnr 5y ago

In my understanding (diffeq in college), the singularity in black holes and futurology are both special cases of the relatively old concept of a "singularity" in a function, which is (technically) something like a spot where the function stops being expressible as a series. The most interesting kind is where that happens because it went infinite, but IIRC it can also just not be defined there. Point is, neither Einstein nor Vinge nor especially Kurzweil invented it. :)