The singularity

Image from: Wikipedia Commons

I am thrilled to learn how developed this term is.

The singularity, or specifically the technological singularity, refers to the future when artificial intelligence becomes so supreme beyond ours that we cannot even guess what the world will be like. It is often feared as a disaster and the end of the human era.

During the past century and the beginning of this one, the technology world has been developing exponentially. This is a big thing. Suppose you have 2 dollars this year and 4 dollars next year, if this growth is linear, 30 years later, you will have 60 dollars, while with an exponential growth, you will have a billion.

The most famous example may be Moore’s law, which describes the capability of computer chips doubling every 24 months. Similar to this trend, the global telecommunication capacity doubles every 24 month, the information throughput of computers doubles every 14 months and the information storage capacity doubles about every 40 months. This fuels our economy, and at the same time makes it possible for a super powered man-made god or devil.

According to the singularity hypothesis, there could be a technology explosion because of the exponential growth. Information technology, nanotechnology and genomics may be the frontier. I. J. Good mentioned the “intelligence explosion” as early as 1965. He expected the singularity point to be the time when the machine can improve themselves in a way unforeseen by human. Beyond this point, the self-improvement will happen recursively and soon surpass human brain. This could happen suddenly.

It seems the world is heading to this singularity fast. The Europe has a huge project bringing together major universities and research institutes across Europe to study brain human brain and apply the knowledge to intelligent systems. The want to build highly developed neuromorphic chips and robots. The first generation of neuromorphic is actually already on the horizon from the SyNAPSE project in US. Neuromophic chips may also hit the market soon. On Oct. 8^th this year, Matt Grob, CTO of QUALCOMM, announced the company’s development of standardized neuromorphic chips – Zeroth processors – at MIT Technology Review.

At the Singularity summit 2012, there was a survey on when the singularity would happen. The median was 2040. That’s less than 30 years from now. This seems quite optimistic on our ability to develop the technology, but pessimistic on our ability to control technology.

The technology is actually progressing slower than it appears to be. The concept of artificial intelligence has been there for tens of years, but it is not until recently has it reached the daily life, let alone how useless Siri is and that the GPS sometimes lead you to drive against a one-way road. Even in terms of the cutting edge nanotechnology, the quantum physics has been known for almost a century, but its implementations in the latest research devices are still very shallow. No one has ever been able to touch the heart of quantum physics in applications yet. Turning what is known to what is applicable is still a hard job.

Perhaps, some social problems may be more urgent than the singularity. Before the singularity can possibly happen, the unemployment will inevitably rise because the jobs that are once for men will be taken by machines. This may have an effect to slow the technology development down and possibly cause other problems as well. This seems to be a real problem to worry instead of whether human will be slaved by robots.

Nevertheless, the notion from the singularity summit and the Singularity University is quite encouraging: identify and promote the ideas that will make a difference in human future.