Technological singularity
The technological singularity or tech singularity is the idea that a machine or computer, or a group of machines and computers, will one day be smarter than humans.
Because it has not happened yet, nobody really knows what the technological singularity will do, or if it will even happen. Nonetheless, the technological singularity has been a subject in many science fiction works, such as The Terminator, The Matrix, and the Borg in Star Trek. In most depictions of the singularity, machines have consciousness and humans are considered to be useless. The futurist (who studies about the future) and inventor Ray Kurzweil believes the Singularity will happen about the year 2045. The major impetus driving toward the singularity, according to Kurzweil, is that according to Moore's Law, computers are doubling in memory capacity every 18 months. According to Kurzweil, by 2029, computers will be as intelligent as human beings (see artificial intelligence).[1]
Possible effects of such a singularity can include
- Human extinction or enslavement
- Mass unemployment, starvation, etc.
- A post-scarcity system
- Cybernetic immortality
- Mind uploading
Etc.
Technological Singularity Media
Moore's Law over 120 Years
According to Kurzweil, his logarithmic graph of 15 lists of paradigm shifts for key historic events shows an exponential trend.
Schematic Timeline of Information and Replicators in the Biosphere: Gillings et al.'s "major evolutionary transitions" in information processing.
Amount of digital information worldwide (5×1021 bytes) versus human genome information worldwide (1019 bytes) in 2014
Feynman's vision of a medical use for nanotechnology by swallowing the doctor may be partially achieved by the ribosome, which functions as a biological machine. Such protein domain dynamics can only now be seen by neutron spin echo spectroscopy.
Related pages
References
- ↑ Kurzweil, Ray The Singularity is Near 2006
Other websites
- Technological Singularity subreddit
- The Technological Singularity and Merging with Machines - BigThink.com
Template:Existential risk from artificial intelligence
