I hate the "singularity"

[redhot1]

I have been reading about the technological "singularity" as described by Ray Kurzweil and his book "The Singularity Is Near". It's going to be the end of mankind as we know it today. It scares the living crap out of me, is anyone else urgently afraid of it? Ray predicts the "singularity", the moment of explosive technological advance and artificial intelligence, will happen by 2045 or sooner. Why can't this stuff happen 100 years from now when I'm dead? I'm so angry and agitated and upset.

[Ms Grace]

Fifty years ago they thought we'd have flying cars and be living on the moon by now. Don't fret about the future, live your life for now.

[Jill F]

Fifty years ago they thought we'd have flying cars and be living on the moon by now. Don't fret about the future, live your life for now.

Where's my flying car?  They promised us flying cars and robots who clean our houses.  I want my money back, dammit! 

Oh, and can we send the TERFs to live on the moon along with the Westboro Batsh*t Cult?

[Lonicera]

Provided that reality itself isn't a massively limiting factor or humanity doesn't self-exterminate in a flash of obliviousness, I find many of the possibilities facing our species terrifying and tantalising but I doubt our fundamental nature is going to change much in the next century. There are an awful lot of speculative predictions.

Honestly, I'd love it if some magical means of life-extension allowed me to exist long enough to see us drastically change into something utterly unrecognisable physically, psychologically, and socially. Thanks to reading quite a bit of science-fiction I tend to let my imagination run away with itself in this area. I'm particularly a fan of the Highers and ANA in Peter F Hamilton's Commonwealth Universe if anyone has read those books.

[kelly_aus]

It's one mans theory. And it certainly seems to have its detractors. It also seems to have a flaw or 2 that even I can see. I wouldn't be worried.

Now, a random, out of solar system asteroid strike? There's probably a greater likelihood of that.

[Jill F]

It's one mans theory. And it certainly seems to have its detractors. It also seems to have a flaw or 2 that even I can see. I wouldn't be worried.

Now, a random, out of solar system asteroid strike? There's probably a greater likelihood of that.

Like the power going out?  I swear that if my computer ever talks back to me, I'm pulling the plug. (Yes, I know I'm being a butt.)

[kelly_aus]

Like the power going out?  I swear that if my computer ever talks back to me, I'm pulling the plug. (Yes, I know I'm being a butt.)

There's an assumption made that all growth will be exponential. And we know that isn't true.

[janetcgtv]

Gee Whiz another end of the world theory.    WOW!

In 2000 they forecasted disaster  because of the number 9999999. All this means it won't expire like a state ID card (see date for a senior citizen) or in a customer order or a product number. The computer will look for all items until the chain reads 9999999 and will stop looking. I used to be a programmer analyst.

The Bible predicts that the end of the world is coming if certain disasters occur.
Like Wars and rumors of wars, plagues, natural disasters, and starvation.

This things happened before the Bible was written. So what has changed after the Bible was written

The same things.

Now if the Bible had said an asteroid would destroy the earth and no one had even heard of an asteroid before. I would believe it.

[redhot1]

You know what the "singularity" is though, right?

[kelly_aus]

You know what the "singularity" is though, right?

Yes, I'm familiar with Kurweil's theory.. Simple fact is, it's flawed.

[Susan522]

How about some P.O'd jihadi bringing in a superbug to a city near you?  

[Flan]

The problem with Kurweil's claim to fame and selling books is a lot of the claims are broadly written so that it wouldn't take much to either fulfill or make something not true. As long as humans claim individualism either in culture or per person actions there will never be a collective connection.

The technology he depends on to "transcend human limitations" depends on available energy and resources: a lot of them. It also depends on a certain understanding of computing power when compared to the human brain which is very different from the computers we use (such as this post). Humans are very good at subjective tasks (arts) while computers excel at numbers and raw data. The only thing Kurweil says about this is simply the use of "computational capacity" and about the alleged singularity itself. (technobabble warning)

nanotubes and nanotube circuitry, molecular computing, self-assembly in nanotube circuits, biological systems emulating circuit assembly, computing with DNA, spintronics (computing with the spin of electrons), computing with light, and quantum computing.

so nano-scale assembly (check), chips (for lack of better word) that are task dedicated as there are devices currently for say speech synthesis (check), dna computing (a star trek prediction if anything), optical computing (infiniband anyone?) and of course quantum computing (which is still not very developed but in progress). anything missing other than the brain in a jar idea?

[Miss_Bungle1991]

Fifty years ago they thought we'd have flying cars and be living on the moon by now. Don't fret about the future, live your life for now.

This says it all.

[FTMDiaries]

I have been reading about the technological "singularity" as described by Ray Kurzweil and his book "The Singularity Is Near". It's going to be the end of mankind as we know it today. It scares the living crap out of me, is anyone else urgently afraid of it?

Nope. I've been around long enough to know that nobody can predict the future, no matter how plausible their ideas may sound.

So Kurzweil predicted that this 'singularity' would occur 40 years after he wrote his book? Ok, lets look at events that have actually happened, and work backwards on the same timescale. Let's take the Internet: Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea of the Internet in 1989. Go back 40 years... what did the people of 1949 think the future held?

World War II had recently ended. The baby boom was getting underway. Most Western families had radios, but very few had televisions, which were still a relatively new technology (and very expensive).

Do you think anyone then could've predicted that the first synthetic diamond would be produced in 10 years' time? That Neil Armstrong (or anyone else) would walk on the moon 20 years later? That a song by a group of gay men, dressed as gay scene stereotypes, would top the music charts 30 years later? Or that a brilliant British scientist would come up with an idea that would revolutionise the way we comminicate 40 years later? Would these people, who lived before the beginning of the space age, have even dreamed that we'd actually have a robot rolling around on the surface of Mars today?

Nope. Instead, the head of IBM predicted in the late 1940s that he could foresee a future in which there might be as many as five computers in the world. How wrong he was. And if they imagined a robot on Mars, it wouldn't look anything like the Mars Rover; it'd probably be humanoid if you look at the science fiction of the time.

I daresay Kurzweil will be equally off-target.

[Lyric]

It scares the living crap out of me, is anyone else urgently afraid of it?

This reminds me of great line in one of the Fellowship of the Ring novels. Gandalf says something like, "Despair is a luxury enjoyed by those who know their fates and we know not ours". The future has always had threats. When I was a kid in school, we regularly had nuclear war drills. We were pretty certain we'd have a nuke war before we reached adulthood. Well, that could still happen, but it hasn't yet and I've lived for several decades since then. Personally, I think my chances are better with an intelligent computer than a nuclear bomb anyway. My approach is to live each wonderful day we're given as if it were a great gift and deal with future disasters when and if they come.

~ Lyric ~

[Dee Marshall]

... Personally, I think my chances are better with an intelligent computer than a nuclear bomb anyway....

Remember "duck and cover"? What the heck was that supposed to do?

As to computers and bombs, read "Colossus". You CAN  have both.

[Yarngeek]

It sounds ridiculous to me, even if robots exceed us in every way, I highly doubt the human race is going to be wiped out so easily. In the end, those ideas have no real proof behind them, there's nothing to worry about. Look back to any prediction people have ever had about the future, and then see how that worked out. As others have pointed out, our jetpacks and artificially intelligent houses are way overdue. In the end, I highly doubt AIs will ever be capable of anything they aren't programmed to do, so as long as the programmers put in something like Asimovs laws of robotics, there should be nothing to worry about.

[Dee Marshall]

I wish I could be so sanguine. If you read all the books, Asimov's Three Laws CAUSED the problems. The robots took over to save us from ourselves.

[Susan522]

Computers are tools, like cars, guns, or hammers.  All can be wielded for good or ill.  The danger lies in the evil that lurks in the hearts of men.

[Kimberley Beauregard]

Where's my flying car?  They promised us flying cars and robots who clean our houses.  I want my money back, dammit!

We've not done Back To The Future any justice.

Oh, and can we send the TERFs to live on the moon along with the Westboro Batsh*t Cult?

Amen to that.