The Singularity
The technological singularity is the theoretical future point which takes place during a period of accelerating change sometime after the creation of a superintelligence.
I. J. Good first wrote of an "intelligence explosion", suggesting that if machines could even slightly surpass human intellect, they could improve their own designs in ways unforeseen by their designers, and thus recursively augment themselves into far greater intelligences. The first such improvements might be small, but as the machine became more intelligent it would become better at becoming more intelligent, which could lead to an exponential and quite sudden growth in intelligence.
Vernor Vinge later called this event "the Singularity" as an analogy between the breakdown of modern physics near a gravitational singularity and the drastic change in society he argues would occur following an intelligence explosion. In the 1980s, Vinge popularized the singularity in lectures, essays, and science fiction. More recently, some prominent technologists such as Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, voiced concern over the potential dangers of Vinge's singularity.
Robin Hanson proposes that multiple "singularities" have occurred throughout history, dramatically affecting the growth rate of the economy. Like the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the past, the technological singularity would increase economic growth between 60 and 250 times. An innovation that allowed for the replacement of virtually all human labor could trigger this event.
Futurist Ray Kurzweil argues that the inevitability of a technological singularity is implied by a long-term pattern of accelerating change that generalizes Moore's Law to technologies predating the integrated circuit, and which he argues will continue to other technologies not yet invented.
Source: Wikipedia
July 19th, 2009 - 08:20
Singularity theory reminds me of a succession of half-lifes, which is an existing and provable phenomenon of the physical world (such as with nuclear decay), applied to the biological world:
A given organism – human being for example – lives a first half-life of, say, 50 years, then 25, then 12 1/2, then 6 1/4, 3 1/8…never reaching 100, of course, but the rate of diminishing half-life terms soon takes on the explosive chart characteristics of a Singularity-type event trying to get there.
Similarly, every completed life-cycle may be expressed (after the fact) by a precise sequence of half-lifes that go deeply, and infinitely, into its minute of passing.
Thus, if one treats the universe as an organism – physical, biological or both – , Singularity Theory’s Law of Accelerated Returns begins to look much like a series of half-lifes, too.
But, just like a human being’s base half-life can’t be calculated to decimal accuracy until the end has occurred, so it is with the Singularity’s ultimate point of explosion into universal, or universally expanding, smart matter.
We know from human experience that a nanogenerian is mowing through half-lifes at a pretty good clip because we know fifty years or so is about as big a base half-life as humans can currently hope for.
But how do we really know the base half-life of the Universe? To where we can plot it forward to a single solar year, 2045 – when Singularity theorists say man and machines merge and the Singularity begins to begin?
Maybe. Or maybe it’s 20,045.