The Rise of The Bio-Info-Nano Singularity

[DK Matai]

We are witnessing accelerating trends of exponential growth in the Bio-
Info-Nano (BIN) revolution unfolding all around us. Just as soon as we
have grasped the relevance of some new BIN innovation, we are
challenged by yet more extraordinary technological developments that
completely supersede our expectations and understanding. The paradigm
shifts, taken together, present asymmetric opportunities for
unparalleled growth as well as rising asymmetric risks for human
society's globalised structure, its sustainability and longevity. This
phenomenon of constant acceleration in new technologies is referred to
as the Bio-Info-Nano Singularity by ATCA.

The rise of the BIN Singularity suggests that technological progress
is reaching such an extremely high, near infinite, value at a point in
the near future that it will be impossible to predict what happens
next based on extrapolations of past experience. In fact, that
experience may be an obstacle to grasping the paradigm shift, which is
forcing a multi-generational change. A Singularity is a point at which
an otherwise continuous mathematical progression becomes infinite,
implying that all continuous extrapolation breaks down beyond that
point.

Dramatic changes in the rate of world economic growth have occurred in
the past because of technological advancement. Based on population
growth, the economy doubled every 250,000 years from the Palaeolithic
era until the Neolithic Revolution. This new agricultural economy
began to double every 900 years, a significant increase. In the
current era, beginning with the Industrial Revolution, the world’s
economic output has doubled as an average, every fifteen years, sixty
times faster than during the agricultural era. As the rise of the BIN
Singularity causes a similar revolution one could expect economic
output to double much faster with the requirement for remarkably
little human labour or intervention, and this may cause The Great
Unwind (2007-?) and The Great Reset (2008-?) to follow an uncharted
territory that may be entirely unpredictable and different from the
1930s or other less severe downturns in recent decades.

The human capability for information processing is limited, yet there
is an accelerating change in the development and deployment of new
technology. This relentless wave upon wave of new information and
technology causes an overload on the human mind by eventually flooding
it. The resulting acopia -- inability to cope -- has to be solved by
the use of ever more sophisticated information intelligence.
Extrapolating these capabilities suggests the near-term emergence and
visibility of self-improving neural networks, "artificial"
intelligence, quantum algorithms, quantum computing and super-
intelligence. This metamorphosis is so much beyond present human
capabilities that it becomes impossible to understand it with the pre-
conceptions and conditioning of the present mindset, societal make-up
and existing technology.

Machines capable of performing mental and physical tasks as capably as
humans are likely to cause a rise in wages for extraordinary jobs at
which humans can still outperform machines. However, a proliferation
of human-like machines is likely to cause a net drop in ordinary
wages, as humans compete with robots and soft-bots for jobs. Also, the
wealth of the technological singularity may be concentrated in the
hands of a few who own the means of mass producing the intelligent
robot and soft-bot workforce. The Bio-Info-Nano Singularity is a
transcendence to a wholly new regime of mind, society and technology,
in which we have to learn to think in a new way in order to survive as
a species.

I J Good, in 1965, 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 machines become more intelligent they would self-innovate,
which could lead to a cascade of self-improvements and a sudden surge
towards super-intelligence. This could now happen via the Bio-Info-
Nano Singularity?

Vernor Vinge, in 1982, proposed that the creation of smarter-than-
human intelligence represented a breakdown in humans' ability to model
their future. The argument was that authors cannot write realistic
characters who are smarter than humans. If humans could visualise
smarter-than-human intelligence, we would be that smart ourselves.
Vinge named this event "the Singularity". He compared it to the
breakdown of the prevalent model of physics when it was used to model
the gravitational Singularity beyond the event horizon of a black
hole.

Ray Kurzweil, in 1999, generalised the Singularity to apply it to the
sudden growth of any technology -- in a similar way to ATCA's Bio-Info-
Nano Singularity -- not just intelligence. He argued that Singularity
is inevitably implied by a long-term pattern of accelerating change
that generalises Moore's law to technologies predating the integrated
circuit, and includes material technology (especially as applied to
nanotech), medical technology and other disciplines.

Aubrey de Grey, in 2000, applied the term "Methuselarity" to the point
at which medical technology improves so fast that expected human
lifespan increases by more than one year per year.

Robin Hanson, in 2008, taking the Singularity to refer to sharp
increases in the exponent of economic growth, lists the agricultural
and industrial revolutions as past singularities. Extrapolating from
such past events, Hanson suggests that the next economic Singularity
should increase economic growth between 60 and 250 times. Innovations,
manifest as a result of the Bio-Info-Nano Singularity's approach, that
allow for the replacement of virtually all human labour, could trigger
this event!

The key question: What is globalised human society going to do with
the mass of unemployed human beings that are rendered obsolete by the
approaching super-intelligence of the Bio-Info-Nano Singularity?

[ENDS]

We welcome your thoughts, observations and views. To reflect further
on this, please respond within Twitter, Linked and Facebook's ATCA
Open and related Socratic dialogue platform of HQR.

All the best


DK Matai

Chairman and Founder: mi2g.net, ATCA, The Philanthropia, HQR, @G140

To connect directly with:

. DK Matai: http://twitter.com/DKMatai

. Open HQR: http://twitter.com/OpenHQR

. ATCA Open: http://twitter.com/ATCAOpen

. @G140: http://twitter.com/G140

. mi2g: http://twitter.com/intunit

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