5 ms·

How far off is singularity? Seems like quite an interesting topic.

GuiA 12y ago
About as far off as the second coming of Jesus Christ, the reunification of the Beatles, and Duke Nukem Forever (ah oops, maybe scratch that last one).
jacquesm 12y ago
By some reasoning we're already past it, in the middle of it, it's just around the corner or it will never appear. It's a totally meaningless question without first defining what the singularity actually is. The world we live in today is already very far removed from the one that I was born in but the linkages are still there to be followed. To know how far the singularity is 'off' is by definition impossible, it means that you have knowledge of which linkages are required to get to the point that you won't be able to predict the ones after that. After all when the singularity is here the world we will end up in will have no relationship to the one we are in today. For the record, I think we will see a period of accelerated progress and then we will either fuck up or things will slow down again, I don't believe there will be a runaway event.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  There are a lot of different definitions of "singularity" but generally it means creating superhuman AI, which then makes better AI and does things we can't imagine and so on.
sillysaurus3 12y ago
How far off is singularity? It seems like the question can be rephrased as, "At any point in history, have humans been able to advance technology in a substantial way simply because they wanted to, rather than by stumbling upon a way to do it?" Most technology is incremental. Take flight, for example. The glider had already been around for a substantial amount of time before the Wright brothers solved the "control problem" and the engine problem. Those two problems were the only two left before powered flight was a reality, and the Wright brothers knew it. For the singularity, on the other hand, there's no clear laundry list of problems to solve in order to achieve it. In fact, there's no clear way to even define AI, or at least define it in a way that can be meaningfully translated into current technology. Maybe the advent of quantum computing will change this. I've suspected that AI is fundamentally impossible to implement on a Von Neumann architecture. But this is very easy to say from the point of view of a society which hasn't remotely discovered how to make AI work yet. It's similar in spirit to someone from the 1500s saying "I think electricity is fundamentally impossible to harness, because there's no proper medium to channel it" even though metal was quite widespread at the time. Humans just hadn't figured out how to fashion wires yet. The only thing we can say for certain is that we don't know what we need to know in order to make the singularity a reality, let alone how long it will take.
- seiji 12y ago
  In fact, there's no clear way to even define AI, It's easy to define, but the term has been stolen by people wanting more media attention for less work. AI is just "what we are" without all the squishy parts. AI ("hard" AI, AGI) is a fully thinking, doing, feeling software system implemented in non-biology. I've suspected that AI is fundamentally impossible to implement on a Von Neumann architecture. Balderdash. We haven't discovered any computation problem that our universal computing architecture can't compute because... universal. It's not "universal \ things-that-can-generate-thoughts." Universal simulation machines can simulate things... universally. Now, we may not have the software architecture discovered yet, but it's certainly doable given our current hardware.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    We haven't discovered any computation problem that our universal computing architecture can't compute because... universal. It's not "universal \ things-that-can-generate-thoughts." Universal simulation machines can simulate things... universally. And yet, the Game of Life is completely deterministic and is the opposite of real life in pretty much every way, even with the new advances. Quantum may change this. There are certainly problems which are tractable only on quantum computers. Shor's algorithm is of course the classic example. Saying that Von Neumann architecture is a universal problem solver is a rejection of the idea that quantum computing allows any new problems to be solved, but we have evidence that that's not the case.
    - seiji 12y ago
      Game of Life is completely deterministic and is the opposite of real life in pretty much every way My computer also can compute 5 + 5 and that is the opposite of real life in pretty much every way too. Not every algorithm results in life [and it requires algorithm + data + continual input, which the GoL doesn't integrate]. is a rejection of the idea that quantum computing allows any new problems to be solved Because the idea quantum computing solves new problems has no basis in research or reality? "Quantum" != magic A tiny, currently impractical, factorization algorithm isn't a new problem current computers can't solve. They just take the long way 'round.
tim333 12y ago
Depends a bit how you define it. I quite like (output of stuff)/(hours of human labor required) going infinite which should happen when robots can build better robots without us. Unlike the 'singularity' in most of the literature that one is actually a singularity in the math sense. 2040?

GuiA 12y ago

About as far off as the second coming of Jesus Christ, the reunification of the Beatles, and Duke Nukem Forever (ah oops, maybe scratch that last one).

jacquesm 12y ago

By some reasoning we're already past it, in the middle of it, it's just around the corner or it will never appear. It's a totally meaningless question without first defining what the singularity actually is. The world we live in today is already very far removed from the one that I was born in but the linkages are still there to be followed. To know how far the singularity is 'off' is by definition impossible, it means that you have knowledge of which linkages are required to get to the point that you won't be able to predict the ones after that. After all when the singularity is here the world we will end up in will have no relationship to the one we are in today. For the record, I think we will see a period of accelerated progress and then we will either fuck up or things will slow down again, I don't believe there will be a runaway event.

Houshalter 12y ago
There are a lot of different definitions of "singularity" but generally it means creating superhuman AI, which then makes better AI and does things we can't imagine and so on.

sillysaurus3 12y ago

How far off is singularity? It seems like the question can be rephrased as, "At any point in history, have humans been able to advance technology in a substantial way simply because they wanted to, rather than by stumbling upon a way to do it?" Most technology is incremental. Take flight, for example. The glider had already been around for a substantial amount of time before the Wright brothers solved the "control problem" and the engine problem. Those two problems were the only two left before powered flight was a reality, and the Wright brothers knew it. For the singularity, on the other hand, there's no clear laundry list of problems to solve in order to achieve it. In fact, there's no clear way to even define AI, or at least define it in a way that can be meaningfully translated into current technology. Maybe the advent of quantum computing will change this. I've suspected that AI is fundamentally impossible to implement on a Von Neumann architecture. But this is very easy to say from the point of view of a society which hasn't remotely discovered how to make AI work yet. It's similar in spirit to someone from the 1500s saying "I think electricity is fundamentally impossible to harness, because there's no proper medium to channel it" even though metal was quite widespread at the time. Humans just hadn't figured out how to fashion wires yet. The only thing we can say for certain is that we don't know what we need to know in order to make the singularity a reality, let alone how long it will take.

seiji 12y ago
In fact, there's no clear way to even define AI, It's easy to define, but the term has been stolen by people wanting more media attention for less work. AI is just "what we are" without all the squishy parts. AI ("hard" AI, AGI) is a fully thinking, doing, feeling software system implemented in non-biology. I've suspected that AI is fundamentally impossible to implement on a Von Neumann architecture. Balderdash. We haven't discovered any computation problem that our universal computing architecture can't compute because... universal. It's not "universal \ things-that-can-generate-thoughts." Universal simulation machines can simulate things... universally. Now, we may not have the software architecture discovered yet, but it's certainly doable given our current hardware.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  We haven't discovered any computation problem that our universal computing architecture can't compute because... universal. It's not "universal \ things-that-can-generate-thoughts." Universal simulation machines can simulate things... universally. And yet, the Game of Life is completely deterministic and is the opposite of real life in pretty much every way, even with the new advances. Quantum may change this. There are certainly problems which are tractable only on quantum computers. Shor's algorithm is of course the classic example. Saying that Von Neumann architecture is a universal problem solver is a rejection of the idea that quantum computing allows any new problems to be solved, but we have evidence that that's not the case.
  - seiji 12y ago
    Game of Life is completely deterministic and is the opposite of real life in pretty much every way My computer also can compute 5 + 5 and that is the opposite of real life in pretty much every way too. Not every algorithm results in life [and it requires algorithm + data + continual input, which the GoL doesn't integrate]. is a rejection of the idea that quantum computing allows any new problems to be solved Because the idea quantum computing solves new problems has no basis in research or reality? "Quantum" != magic A tiny, currently impractical, factorization algorithm isn't a new problem current computers can't solve. They just take the long way 'round.

tim333 12y ago

Depends a bit how you define it. I quite like (output of stuff)/(hours of human labor required) going infinite which should happen when robots can build better robots without us. Unlike the 'singularity' in most of the literature that one is actually a singularity in the math sense. 2040?