Singularity 2017
Sebastian Thorndike
The Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann (1903-1957) became the first known person to use the concept of a "singularity" in the technological context.[5][need quotation to verify] Stanislaw Ulam reported in 1958 an earlier discussion with von Neumann "centered on the accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue".[6] Subsequent authors have echoed this viewpoint.[3][7]
Some scientists, including Stephen Hawking, have expressed concern that artificial superintelligence (ASI) could result in human extinction.[9][10] The consequences of a technological singularity and its potential benefit or harm to the human race have been intensely debated.
Although technological progress has been accelerating in most areas, it has been limited by the basic intelligence of the human brain, which has not, according to Paul R. Ehrlich, changed significantly for millennia.[14] However, with the increasing power of computers and other technologies, it might eventually be possible to build a machine that is significantly more intelligent than humans.[15]
Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion', and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.
One version of intelligence explosion is where computing power approaches infinity in a finite amount of time. In this version, once AIs are performing the research to improve themselves, speed doubles e.g. after 2 years, then 1 year, then 6 months, then 3 months, then 1.5 months, etc., where the infinite sum of the doubling periods is 4 years. Unless prevented by physical limits of computation and time quantization, this process would literally achieve infinite computing power in 4 years, properly earning the name "singularity" for the final state. This form of intelligence explosion is described in Yudkowsky (1996).[20]
A superintelligence, hyperintelligence, or superhuman intelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. "Superintelligence" may also refer to the form or degree of intelligence possessed by such an agent. John von Neumann, Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil define the concept in terms of the technological creation of super intelligence, arguing that it is difficult or impossible for present-day humans to predict what human beings' lives would be like in a post-singularity world.[4][21]
The related concept "speed superintelligence" describes an AI that can function like a human mind, only much faster.[22] For example, with a million-fold increase in the speed of information processing relative to that of humans, a subjective year would pass in 30 physical seconds.[23] Such a difference in information processing speed could drive the singularity.[24]
Technology forecasters and researchers disagree regarding when, or whether, human intelligence will likely be surpassed. Some argue that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will probably result in general reasoning systems that bypass human cognitive limitations. Others believe that humans will evolve or directly modify their biology so as to achieve radically greater intelligence.[25][26] A number of futures studies focus on scenarios that combine these possibilities, suggesting that humans are likely to interface with computers, or upload their minds to computers, in a way that enables substantial intelligence amplification. The book The Age of Em by Robin Hanson describes a hypothetical future scenario in which human brains are scanned and digitized, creating "uploads" or digital versions of human consciousness. In this future, the development of these uploads may precede or coincide with the emergence of superintelligent artificial intelligence.[27]
Some writers use "the singularity" in a broader way to refer to any radical changes in society brought about by new technology (such as molecular nanotechnology),[28][29][30] although Vinge and other writers specifically state that without superintelligence, such changes would not qualify as a true singularity.[4]
In 1965, I. J. Good wrote that it is more probable than not that an ultra-intelligent machine would be built in the twentieth century.[18] In 1993, Vinge predicted greater-than-human intelligence between 2005 and 2030.[4] In 1996, Yudkowsky predicted a singularity in 2021.[20] In 2005, Kurzweil predicted human-level AI around 2029,[31] and the singularity in 2045.[32] In a 2017 interview, Kurzweil reaffirmed his estimates.[33] In 1988, Moravec predicted that if the rate of improvement continues, the computing capabilities for human-level AI would be available in supercomputers before 2010.[34] In 1998, Moravec predicted human-level AI by 2040, and intelligence far beyond human by 2050.[35]
Prominent technologists and academics dispute the plausibility of a technological singularity, including Paul Allen,[11] Jeff Hawkins,[12] John Holland, Jaron Lanier, Steven Pinker,[12] Theodore Modis,[13] and Gordon Moore,[12] whose law is often cited in support of the concept.[38]
Robin Hanson expressed skepticism of human intelligence augmentation, writing that once the "low-hanging fruit" of easy methods for increasing human intelligence have been exhausted, further improvements will become increasingly difficult.[39] Despite all of the speculated ways for amplifying human intelligence, non-human artificial intelligence (specifically seed AI) is the most popular option among the hypotheses that would advance the singularity.[citation needed]
The possibility of an intelligence explosion depends on three factors.[40] The first accelerating factor is the new intelligence enhancements made possible by each previous improvement. Contrariwise, as the intelligences become more advanced, further advances will become more and more complicated, possibly outweighing the advantage of increased intelligence. Each improvement should generate at least one more improvement, on average, for movement towards singularity to continue. Finally, the laws of physics may eventually prevent further improvement.
There are two logically independent, but mutually reinforcing, causes of intelligence improvements: increases in the speed of computation, and improvements to the algorithms used.[7] The former is predicted by Moore's Law and the forecasted improvements in hardware,[41] and is comparatively similar to previous technological advances. But Schulman and Sandberg[42] argue that software will present more complex challenges than simply operating on hardware capable of running at human intelligence levels or beyond.
A 2017 email survey of authors with publications at the 2015 NeurIPS and ICML machine learning conferences asked about the chance that "the intelligence explosion argument is broadly correct". Of the respondents, 12% said it was "quite likely", 17% said it was "likely", 21% said it was "about even", 24% said it was "unlikely" and 26% said it was "quite unlikely".[43]
Both for human and artificial intelligence, hardware improvements increase the rate of future hardware improvements. An analogy to Moore's Law suggests that if the first doubling of speed took 18 months, the second would take 18 subjective months; or 9 external months, whereafter, four months, two months, and so on towards a speed singularity.[44][20] Some upper limit on speed may eventually be reached. Jeff Hawkins has stated that a self-improving computer system would inevitably run into upper limits on computing power: "in the end there are limits to how big and fast computers can run. We would end up in the same place; we'd just get there a bit faster. There would be no singularity."[12]
It is difficult to directly compare silicon-based hardware with neurons. But Berglas (2008) notes that computer speech recognition is approaching human capabilities, and that this capability seems to require 0.01% of the volume of the brain. This analogy suggests that modern computer hardware is within a few orders of magnitude of being as powerful as the human brain.
The exponential growth in computing technology suggested by Moore's law is commonly cited as a reason to expect a singularity in the relatively near future, and a number of authors have proposed generalizations of Moore's law. Computer scientist and futurist Hans Moravec proposed in a 1998 book[45] that the exponential growth curve could be extended back through earlier computing technologies prior to the integrated circuit.
Ray Kurzweil postulates a law of accelerating returns in which the speed of technological change (and more generally, all evolutionary processes)[46] increases exponentially, generalizing Moore's law in the same manner as Moravec's proposal, and also including material technology (especially as applied to nanotechnology), medical technology and others.[47] Between 1986 and 2007, machines' application-specific capacity to compute information per capita roughly doubled every 14 months; the per capita capacity of the world's general-purpose computers has doubled every 18 months; the global telecommunication capacity per capita doubled every 34 months; and the world's storage capacity per capita doubled every 40 months.[48] On the other hand, it has been argued that the global acceleration pattern having the 21st century singularity as its parameter should be characterized as hyperbolic rather than exponential.[49]
Kurzweil reserves the term "singularity" for a rapid increase in artificial intelligence (as opposed to other technologies), writing for example that "The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains ... There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine".[50] He also defines his predicted date of the singularity (2045) in terms of when he expects computer-based intelligences to significantly exceed the sum total of human brainpower, writing that advances in computing before that date "will not represent the Singularity" because they do "not yet correspond to a profound expansion of our intelligence."[51]
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