[tt] Nanodot: Nanotechnology News and Discussion » Blog Archive » Singularity, part 2

[Petter Wingren-Rasmussen]

A very interesting post, thanks!

Some comments:

On 2/13/09, Brian Atkins <brian at posthuman.com> wrote:

> Actually, it's easy to produce greater-than-human intelligence: give a
> human a
> pencil and paper. Such an augmented human can multiply 10-digit numbers,
> something an unaided human has a really hard time doing. Want an even more
> intelligent system? Give the human a computer connected to the internet and
> access to Google. We humans have been making ourselves more intelligent in
> ways
> like this for our entire history as a species, and — by Jove — yes, there
> has
> been a positive feedback loop and yes, there has been an exponential
> increase.


Although I agree with you, it doesnt capture the essence of what at least I
consider to be the Singularity. It is a strong critical argument against
that the Singularity actually will happen as proposed by SF writers.
Humans have been increasing their intelligence slowly over millenias, what
is to say that a slightly more intelligent machine or man-machine symbiosis
will increase its intelligence billions of times faster?


> To sum up: the "Singularity" should best be thought of as the second half
> of the
> information technology revolution, extending it to most physical and
> intellectual work. Overall economic growth rates will shift from their
> current
> levels of roughly 5% to Moore's Law-like rates of 70% to 100%. The shift
> will
> probably take on the order of a decade (paralleling the growth of the
> internet),
> and probably fall somewhere in the 20s, 30,s or 40s.


Wasn't part of the original singularity-idea that an AI more intelligent
thatn humans would emerge?

If this is possible I´d prefer to look at our current situation as something
similar to the situation when the first protozoic lifeforms emerged.
The elemental structures are there for further development and most
computers are connected nowadays. The existing lifeforms (dataviruses) are
however barely equivalent of biological viruses.
If/when sentient beings arises from this strata, then we got what I would
call the Singularity.

I think your post is a very interesting read, but the economical analysis
doesnt have much to do with my image of the singularity.

Comparing the history of killer whales with humans would probably bring more
similarities than between humans and sentient computers.
(After all, both humans and killer whales eat other organisms to survive,
are prone to mutations, have sex, offspring and different civilizations.)

I´m not saying that your analysis is wrong, just that the artificial
lifeforms will have an entirely different economy and it will interfere with
our own and, if so inclined, dominate it within a century or two. This is a
situation that I dont think can be compared to anything less than the
emergence of homo sapiens sapiens, if even that.
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