At 01:22 PM 8/02/00 +0000, Charlie Stross wrote:
>http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000111395221259&rtmo=aTC6KBdJ&atmo=9999
9999&pg=/et/00/2/3/ecfut03.html
>
>Mentions Vernor Vinge, the singularity, Rudy Rucker, Hans Moravec --
>the author's done their homework properly.
Well, let's see:
Chris Watkins writes (if that's the verb I'm looking for):
===========
Soon, according to some
futurists, the rate of change will
become so quick that we will be
totally unable to guess what
tomorrow will bring - as if there
were an opaque wall drawn
across the future, confounding
our most diligent attempts at
prediction.
This concept is known as the
Singularity, a term borrowed
from mathematics describing a
point at which the rules fail,
quantities become infinite, and
the curve rips right through the
graph paper and heads off into
uncharted territory. The catalyst
for this spectacular event,
according to Professor Vernor
Vinge of San Diego State
University, is - you guessed it -
the computer. Vinge presented a
paper on the Singularity at the
VISION-21 symposium back in
1993, sponsored by Nasa's Lewis
Research Centre and the Ohio
Aerospace Institute. "We are on
the edge of change," he
announced, "comparable to the
rise of human life on Earth."
Computer technology over the
past fifty years has been
following a curve very much like
that described above -
representing exponential
growth. Computers double in
power roughly every 18 months,
a fact noted by Gordon Moore,
one of the founders of Intel, in
1965. This doubling period has
held remarkably steady for the
past 30 years, and "Moore's
Law" appears to suggest that
early in this century computers
will reach, and quickly surpass,
the capacity of the human brain.
"When greater-than-human
intelligence drives progress, that
progress will be much more
rapid," observed Vinge. "In fact,
there seems no reason why
progress itself would not involve
the creation of still more
intelligent entities, on a still
shorter timescale."
For all their impressive abilities,
today's best computers are
rivalled in power by the tiny
brains of insects. Nevertheless,
IBM's Deep Blue managed to
defeat Garry Kasparov by
channelling all that power into a
single task, namely playing a
mean game of chess. It is the
arrival of computers with
human-like intelligence - able to
concentrate all that immense
power on to a single problem,
such as building an even better
computer - that triggers the
Singularity. Smarter machines
lead to yet smarter machines,
trailing explosive technological
advances in their wake.
======================
Compare with some passages from THE SPIKE (not readily available in the UK,
I gather):
< That is the edge of a technological Singularity, the place when the
future starts to go completely opaque. Once a human-level machine takes
charge of its own development, with its storage and internal connections
and speed doubling every eighteen months, you get a superhuman-level
machine in (historically speaking) the blink of an eye. >
< The trends were going asymptotic, he pointed out. An asymptote, you'll
recall, is a curve that rises sharply until it is heading almost straight
up the page, and gets closer and closer to the purely vertical in a shorter
and shorter time. At the limit, which is reached quite quickly (disproving
Zeno's ancient paradox about the tortoise beating the hare if it has a
head-start), the curve goes to infinity. It rips through the top of the
graph and is never seen again. >
< The core notion in these forecasts was first described metaphorically as
a technological Singularity by Professor Vernor Vinge, a computer scientist
in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, San Diego State University. A
singularity is a mathematical point where analysis breaks down, where
infinities enter an equation. And at that point, mathematics packs it in.
A black hole in space is a kind of spacetime example of this rather
abstract pathology. Hence, cosmic black holes are also known as
`singularities'. >
< While Vinge first advanced his insight in works of imaginative fiction,
he has featured it more rigorously in such formal papers as his address to
the VISION-21 Symposium, sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the
Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30-31, 1993. Professor Vinge opened that
paper with the following characteristic statement, which can serve as a
fair summary of my own starting point:
`The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature
of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change
comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this
change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than
human intelligence.' >
Is it barely possible that *I* did the author's homework for him? (If so, I
don't see a cheque in the mailbox...) Obviously we are both deeply indebted
to Vernor and others, but I do recognise some of my little babies... that
curve ripping through the top of the graph paper, for example.
Grump.
Damien Broderick
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