Saturday, June 14, 2008

E Pluribus Unum, v2.0

If you're interested in this sort of thing, IEEE's Spectrum has put together a special report on the coming Singularity. There are articles and videos, featuring both optimists and skeptics. I haven't gone through it yet, but it looks good.

On a related note, John Horgan, a science writer and skeptic about all this, interviewed and debated a leading proponent, Eliezer Yudkowsky, on BloggingHeads.tv's Science Saturday, last week.

6 comments:

John Evo said...

And Horgan and Johnson get in to it a bit again on the most current Science Saturday.

I'd just like to point out that those proclaiming that some sort of Singularity (naturally, everyone has a different notion of what that, exactly, means) coming within the next 30 years, is strangely reminiscent of religious factions who are always certain that "end times" are in "their time".

bjkeefe said...

There is something to your view of this, John, but I don't think it's as easily dismissed as that. Thoughts about the looming Singularity are at least based on some evidence and not entirely unreasonable extrapolations. Looking at the changes wrought already by computers and networking, there's no question that these technological advances have had a large impact already.

I am not ready to bet the farm on mind melds, or widespread upgrading of humans via silicon implants (NB: as distinct from silicone implants), or the thought of bowing down to our robot overlords. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to bet too much against big -- and probably disruptive -- changes, either.

It's the little things. Consider that facial and voice recognition software are already pretty good and will continue to get better, as more processing power is added. Add to that ever-decreasing data storage costs, ever-increasing efficiencies in indexing and sharing data, ongoing improvements in cheap camera miniaturization and RFID chips, the increased willingness of the citizenry to yawn about wiretapping, and a complete surveillance society is well within the grasp of any government who wants it. And that's just one dystopian scenario that comes to mind.

So, tiresome as some of the Singularity enthusiasts can be, I'm glad that there are people thinking about these things.

John Evo said...

I don't disagree with a thing you said.

But one of the consensus points of "a" Singularity seems to be that computers reach a certain point complexity equivalence to the human mind, with millions of times the brute computational force. At that point, they actually start getting exponentially stronger.

I'd be willing to bet we are a few life-times away from that (not 30 years). Though I could be wrong. It's all conjecture.

Anonymous said...

Interesting interview that Horgan did on Bloggingheads and I guess the question of singularity is no longer "if" but "how soon." The question for me is would I want to live in a future world like that? The answer for me is probably no, but then new things are always threatening in the beginning. What's a world run by geeks and computers going to be like?

John Evo said...

TC, bow before your overlords!

Anonymous said...

Have pity on this worthless sinner, oh ye mighty Microsoft. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Redmond. The end is near and they ain't shitting around about it this time. :-)

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